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CONSTANTINE  I 

AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 


4 
J 


THE  AUTHOR 


CONSTANTINE  I 
AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 


BY 
PAXTON  HIBBEN,  A.B.,  A.M.,  F.R.G.S. 

Chevalier  of  the  Order  of  St.  Stanislas, 
Officer  of  the  Order  of  the  Redeemer 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 
THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1920 


jOOO^}^ 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
The  Century  Co. 


Published,  Jwne,  1920 


TH  AYTOY  MEFAAEITHTI 

Tn 

BA2IAEI   TfiN  EAAHNQN 

KSiNSTANTINfl 

SIRE! 

I  do  not  believe  in  kings 
nor  in  the  business  of  kings. 

But  I  believe  in  you,  Sir,  as 
a  Man. 

It  is  therefore  not  to  the 
King  of  the  Hellenes  that  I 
dedicate  this  book,  but  to  the 
sincere  democrat,  the  leader  and 
comrade  of  his  people,  the  brave 
and  able  soldier,  the  loyal 
friend,  the  devoted  patriot  and 
the  generous,  open-hearted  man 
that  I  have  found  you. 

Athens,  January  25,  1917. 


FOREWORD  • 

From  the  first  contact,  Latins  and  Greeks  looked  upon  each 
other  with  mistrust,  and  the  fundamental  antagonism  which 
separated  the  two  civihzations  was  manifest  in  mutual  suspi- 
cions, continual  difficulties,  incessant  conflicts  and  reciprocal 
accusations  of  violence  and  treachery.  ...  It  was  easy  to  see 
that  Greek  hospitality  did  not  inspire  the  crusaders  with  un- 
bounded confidence.  It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  the 
Latins  were  extraordinarily  uncomfortable  guests.   .   .   . 

Tlie  westerners,  moreover,  complained  bitterly  of  the  ingrati- 
tude, the  perfid}',  the  treachery  of  the  Greek  emperor  and  his 
subjects,  and  they  held  Alexis  solely  responsible  for  all  the 
final  failures  of  the  crusade.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  that  is  a 
pure  legend,  carefully  fostered  by  all  the  enemies  of  the  Byzan- 
tine monarchy,  and  the  echo  of  which,  transmitted  down  the 
ages,  explains  so  many  injustices  and  stubborn  prejudices  which 
even  to-day  unconsciously  persist  against  Byzance. 

In  reality,  once  Alexis  had  treated  with  the  crusaders,  he  was 
true  to  his  word,  and  if  the  rupture  came,  its  cause  should  be 
sought  above  all  in  the  bad  faith  of  the  Latin  princes.  Charles 
Diehl,  "  Figures   Byzantine,"  vol  II. 

What  appears  to  have  happened  a  thousand  years  ago  be- 
tween the  Crusaders  and  the  Greek  emperors  of  the  Byzantine 
Empire  has  repeated  itself  to-day  between  the  Allied  forces  in 
the  Near  East  and  the  Greek  King  Constantine.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  construe  a  more  faithful  characterization  of  the 
spirit  of  events  in  Greece  in  the  last  five  years  than  that  given 
by  Mr.  Diehl,  w^riting  of  the  Byzantine  Empire. 

The  pages  which  follow  were  written  in  the  spring  of  1917. 
I  had  been  in  Greece,  Macedonia,  and  Serbia  since  the  summer 
of  1915.     On   the  ground,  unrestricted  by   censorship,  I  had 

vii 


FOREWORD 

been  able  to  follow  step  by  step  the  progress  of  the  diplomacy 
of  the  great  European  Powers  in  respect  to  Greece,  so  like  their 
recent  diplomacy  in  respect  to  Armenia,  When  I  returned  to 
America  I  had  a  talk  with  one  of  the  best  informed  men  in  the 
United  States. 

"  You  have  no  idea  what  is  going  on  in  Greece,"  I  told  him. 
"  You  cannot  have.  The  censorship  is  such  that  you  get  noth- 
ing but  one  side  —  garbled  accounts  devoid  of  truth  or  propa- 
ganda purposely  misleading." 

"  You  arc  wrong,"  he  replied.  "  We  do  know,  in  a  way.  Of 
course  we  do  not  know  the  details,  but  we  have  it  fairly  clear  in 
mind  that  the  Allies  have  been  pulling  some  pretty  rough  stuff 
in  Greece.  The  American  newspaper-reader  puts  two  and  two 
together  more  shrewdly  than  you  think.  He  knows,  for  ex- 
ample, that  it  is  being  framed  up  on  your  friend  King  Constan- 
tine.  He  suspects  that  France  and  England  are  going  to  drive 
him  out  of  Greece.  I  do  not  say  that  what  they  are  going  to  do 
is  right.  I  say  that  they  are  going  to  do  it,  whether  it  ig  right 
or  wrong,  and  I  get  my  ideas  from  following  the  press  despatches 
like  any  American  newspaper-reader.  We  realize  that  the 
French  and  the  British  have  let  themselves  in  for  a  bad  business 
in  Greece  by  being  a  little  hasty  in  their  action,  and  that  they 
feel  their  prestige  will  be  hurt  if  they  turn  back  now.  They 
feel  that  they  have  got  to  go  through  with  it,  cost  what  may. 
They  will  naturally  try  to  justify  themselves  any  way  they  can. 
They  will  blackguard  Constantine  like  a  pickpocket  and  adver- 
tise A'cnizelos  as  an  angel  from  heaven.  They  have  to ;  it 's 
their  game. 

"  But  I  think  you  will  find  that  the  American  newspaper- 
reader  will  not  be  badly  fooled  by  all  of  this  froth.  Some  day 
the  war  will  be  over,  and  the  truth  will  come  out.  You  will  find 
then  that  it  will  not  surprise  people  much.  But  It  is  no  use  to 
try  to  tell  them  about  it  now;  they  have  something  else  on 
their  minds.  Greece  is  only  one  corner  of  the  big  business  — 
the  war.     When  the  war  has  been  won,  people  may  look  into  the 

viji 


FOREWORD 

matter  of  wliat  has  been  done  in  Greece,  or  they  nia^'  forget 
all  about  it.      You  never  can  tell." 

Nevertheless,  I  wrote  this  book  then.  I  myself  was  ea^er  to 
get  into  the  war.  Virtually  the  only  dispassionate  witness  of 
**«nts  I  have  here  set  forth,  I  felt  that  I  should  set  down  in 
black  and  white  what  I  had  seen  and  knew  before  anything 
could  happen  to  prevent  my  writing  it.  Every  phase  of  the 
Grceek  tragedy  was  very  clear  and  living  in  my  mind  in  the 
early  days  of  1917,  and  that  is  what  I  wrote,  the  hving  truth, 
before  time  and  long  service  in  the  army,  in  the  United  States 
and  tlie  A.  E.  F.,  could  dim  or  confuse  any  of  it.  That  is  what 
this  book  is. 

As  I  wrote  the  pages  which  follow,  I  sent  a  carbon  copy  to  the 
State  Department  for  its  information.  When  the  book  was 
printed  and  ready  for  publication,  I  took  a  copy  to  Mr.  Creel's 
office,  and  said  I  was  quite  ready  to  conform  to  any  desire  the 
administration  might  express  regarding  its  publication.  There 
was  not  the  slightest  suggestion  of  opposition  to  its  appearance. 

But  while  the  book  was  being  written,  precisely  what  my 
friend  had  predicted  was  taking  place  in  Greece.  ,No  whisper 
of  what  was  going  on  under  cover  reached  the  American  people, 
however.  We  had  entered  the  war  against  Germany  on  April 
6 ;  but  our  allies  saw  in  that  fact  no  reason  to  share  with  the 
American  people  their  secret  intentions  toAvard  Greece,  nor 
the  unusual  course  they  were  even  then  planning  to  follow  in 
respect  to  a  sovereign  people  determined  to  remain  as  neutral 
as  Spain  or  Holland,  and  for  much  the  same  reasons. 

On  March  19,  1917,  Ribot  replaced  Briand  as  Premier  of 
France.  Immediately,  negotiations  looking  to  the  forcible 
deposition  of  the  constitutionally  elected  head  of  the  Greek  state 
originated  with  the  new  French  Government.  Russia,  united 
to  Greece  bjj^  ties  of  a  common  church,  was  no  longer  in  a  posi- 
tion to  oppose  this  French  project;  the  Italian  Government 
was  nnaltera])ly  hostile  to  it;  even  in  England  the  suggestion 
shocked  the  Government,  and  wlicn  it  was  specifically  proposed 

ix 


FOREWORD 

to  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  Sir  Robert  Cecil  on  May  4,  a  month 
after  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  the  scheme 
was  frowned  upon. 

Nevertheless,  the  French  Government  continued  preparations 
to  this  end,  of  which  the  people  of  France  as  well  as  those  who 
were  fighting  beside  the  French  were  kept  in  ignorance,  and  the 
full  extent  and  purpose  of  which  even  the  governments  allied 
with  France  were  unaware.^  The  French  Foreign  Relations 
Committee  of  the  Senate,  under  Clemenceau's  chairmanship, 
moved  "  the  appointment  by  the  Protecting  Powers  of  a  single 
representative  at  Athens,  capable  of  giving  the  decisions  taken 
by  the  Allies  consecutiveness,  firmness  and  dignity,  by  gathering 
in  its  hands  the  reins  of  the  Entente  chariot,"  and  Senator 
Jonnart  was  chosen  that  single  representative.  On  May  27  he 
and  French  War  IVIinister  Painleve  went  to  London  to  obtain 
British  consent  to  more  drastic  action  in  Greece.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  insisted,  however,  that  at  least  the  semblance  of  liberty 
of  action  on  the  part  of  the  Greek  people  bo  retained,  and  that 
the  new  coercive  measures  to  be  adopted  in  Greece  be  calculated 
to  compel  tjie  Greeks  to  dethrone  their  own  king  rather  than 
that  the  French  and  British  themselves  commit  the  overt  act. 
A  program  of  three  successive  steps  in  compulsion  of  the 
Greeks  was  agreed  upon:  (1)  the  wheat  crop  of  Thessal}', 
upon  which  the  entire  population  of  Greece  depended  for  bread, 
was  to  be  seized;  (2)  an  ultimatum  requiring  Greece's  entry  into 
the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Entente  was  to  be  presented  to  King 
Constantine;  (3)  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth  was  to  be  seized 
militarily  by  the  Allies,  thus  absolutely  cutting  off  from  Athens 

i"The  whole  Italian  press  was  violently  hostile  to  M.  Venizelos.  It 
made  no  secret  of  preferring  Constantine  to  him.  .  .  .  However,  in  an 
enterprise  having  as  its  aim  the  deposition  of  Constantine  and  the  return 
of  Venizelos  to  power,  it  would  be  imprudent  to  ignore  the  state  of  mind 
of  a  part  of  the  Italian  public.  There  was  a  considerable  chance  that 
Italy  might  regard  with  no  very  favorable  eye  —  might  indeed  raise  a 
protest  against  an  adventure  upon  the  principle  of  which  it  had  taken  so 
much  time  to  obtain  an  accord  between  the  cabinets  of  London  and  Paris." 
Raymond  Recouly,  "  M.  Jonnart  en  Grece  et  1' Abdication  de  Constan- 
tin,"  pp.  72-75. 

X 


FOREWORD 

and  the  remainder  of  Greece  tlie  entire  Greek  Army,  which,  as 
an  act  of  good  faith  toward  the  Allies,  King  Constantinc  had 
concentrated  in  the  Peloponnesus.^  Should  all  of  these 
measures  fail  to  produce  the  submission  of  the  Greeks  to  the 
will  of  France  and  England,  the  British  Government  agreed  to 
the  dethronement  of  King  Constantine,  but  on  the  express  con- 
dition that  force  was  to  be  employed  only  as  a  last  resort  and 
in  the  event  that  King  Constantine's  partizans  were  guilty  of 
acts  of  hostility  toward  the  Allies.  The  Britisli  Govcnnnent 
was  unwilling  to  countenance  another  bombardment  without 
notice  to  a  city  filled  with  women  and  children  unless  there  was 
at  least  a  plausible  excuse. 

Judging  by  his  actions,  Senator  Jonnart  had  not  the  vaguest 
idea  of  complying  with  these  conditions,  nor  did  his  govern- 
ment intend  that  he  should.  M.  Raymond  Recouly,  the  French 
chronicler  of  this  epoch,  is  explicit  on  that  head.^  Jonnart 
lost  no  time.  Arriving  In  Paris  from  London  with  Painlcve 
on  May  30,  he  was  in  Brindisi  on  June  4,  whence  he  embarked  at 
once,  and  secretly,  for  Corfu.  Here  he  arranged  with  Admiral 
Gauchet,  in  command  of  the  Allied  fleet,  for  a  naval  force  to 
protect  with  its  heavy  artillery  a  landing  of  troops  both  on  the 
Isthmus  of  Corinth  and  within  sight  of  Athens.  On  June  5 
Jonnart  was  at  Keratsina  Bay  in  consultation  with  the  British 
and  French  Ministers  to  Greece.  He  did  not,  however,  consult 
either  the  Italian  or  the  Russian  Ministers,  nor  did  he  even 
land.  On  June  7  he  was  in  Saloniki,  submitting  his  plans  to  the 
approval  of  Venizelos  and  arranging  the   cooperation   of  the 

1  pp.  524,  525,  5+5. 

2 "  The  more  he  thouprht  about  it,  the  more  M.  Jonnart  was  convinced 
that  to  accomplish  the  result  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  these 
measures  should  not  be  taken  successively,  but  simultaneously.  .  .  .  M. 
Jonnart  was  confronted  by  this  dilemma:  if  he  followed  the  instructions  he 
had  received  literally,  he  would  leave  Constantine  a  possibility  of  resistance. 
...  In  order  that  the  business  niifrht  be  carried  out  comfortably  without 
spillintr  any  blood,  it  was  indispensable  to  modify  somewhat  the  execution 
of  the  measures  planned.  M.  .lonnart  eonra>reously  took  this  decision. 
He  decided  to  make  the  modification."  Raymond  Recouly,  op.  cif.  pp. 
71,  72. 

xi 


FOREWORD 

Allied   military   forces   under   General   Sarrall.     M.   Raymond 
Recouly  summarizes  the  result: 

It  was  decided,  in  order  to  avoid  all  possibility  of  resistance 
and  to  retain  tiie  peaceable  character  of  the  operation,  to  carry 
out  at  one  and  the  same  time  (1)  the  occupation  of  Thessaly; 
(2)  the  occupation  of  tlic  Isthmus  of  Corinth;  (3)  a  landing 
of  troops  in  the  neighborhood  of  Athens. 

It  was  expected  that  the  simultaneous  execution  of  these 
three  acts,  ra])idlv  carried  through,  would  make  it  quite  im- 
possible for  C'onstantine  to  attempt  anything  whatever. 

Definite  plans  were  therefore  made:  the  ultimatum  was  to  be 
delivered  to  Constantine  the  night  of  the  10th;  the  invasion 
of  Thessaly  was  to  take  place  on  the  night  of  the  lOth-llth; 
the  occupation  of  the  Istlmius  of  Corinth  and  the  landing  of 
troops  in  Attica  was  to  be  carried  out  at  the  same  moment,  and 
the  French  General  Staff  immediately  set  about  the  arrange- 
ments for  the  departure  of  the  expeditionary  troops,  so  they 
might  be  in  position  and  ready  to  act  upon  the  date  fixed.^ 

At  the  instance  of  Vcnizelos,  Crown  Prince  George,  who  had 
been  trained  and  educated  for  his  post  as  chief  of  state  under 
the  Greek  Constitution,  was  to  be  excluded  from  the  throne,  also. 
A  younger  and  more  tractable  member  of  the  family,  Prince 
Alexander,  was  to  be  imposed  upon  the  Greeks  as  king. 

The  entire  character  of  the  action  to  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
had  given  a  reluctant  consent  had  altered.  There  was  no  longer 
any  question  of  a  series  of  coercive  steps  calculated  to  induce 
the  Greek  people  to  act.  The  seizure  of  the  wheat  crop  of  Thes- 
saly had  become  the  military  occupation  of  Thessaly ;  the  use 
of  troops  as  a  last  resort  to  force  the  abdication  of  King 
Constantine,  under  threat  of  another  fleet  bombardment  of 
Athens,  had  become  a  first  step.  When  it  came  to  basing  any 
practical  action  on  the  idea  that  the  people  of  Greece  would 
rally  to  Venizelos  the  moment  King  Constantine  was  out  of  the 
way,  a  legend  reiterated  both  in  the  French  and  British  press 

1  Raymond  Recouly,  op.  cit.  pp.  88,  89. 

xii 


FOREWORD 

for  two  years,  that  assumption  was  promptly  re^ 
dangerous  fallacy,  and  preparations  were  made  to  ini,, 
Cretan  in  power  only  after  the  French  military  occupation  had 
completely  disposed  of  any  opposition  to  ^  enizelos's  return. 
In  this  view  Vcnizclos,  feeling  that  there  might  be  some  per- 
sonal peril  in  accompanying  the  French  expeditionary  force, 
readily  agreed. 

The  invasion  of  Thessaly  began  on  June  10,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  following  da}'  that  Jonnart  presented  his  ultimatum 
to  Prime  Minister  Zaimis.  In  the  name  of  the  "  Protecting 
Powers,"  of  which  one,  Russia,  could  not  and  did  not  approve 
this  action,  while  another,  Great  Britain,  had  explicity  rccjuired 
a  method  of  procedure  wholh'  other  than  that  followed,  Jon- 
nart demanded  the  abdication  of  King  Constantine  and  a  reply 
within  twenty-four  hours.  King  Constantine,  the  document 
stated,  would  be  left  free  to  designate  one  of  his  heirs  as  his 
successor,  with  the  approval  of  the  "  Protecting  Powers."  A 
memorandum  presented  at  the  same  time,  however,  excluded 
Crown  Prince  George  and  virtually  forced  the  designation  of  the 
king's  second  son,  Prince  Alexander,  who  had  already  been 
chosen  by  Venizelos.  A  written  pledge  was  given  by  Jonnart 
that  no  reprisals  against  the  supporters  of  King  Constantine 
would  be  tolerated. 

King  Constantine  called  a  crown  council  at  once  and  made 
known  his  intention  to  save  Greece  further  bloodshed  and  suffer- 
ing by  complying  immediately  and  literally  with  the  demands 
of  the  ultimatum,  precisely  as  he  had  complied  throughout  with 
all  the  demands  made  upon  him  by  the  self-styled  "  Protecting 
Powers  of  Greece."  To  every  counsel  of  resistance  —  and  there 
were  many,  for  the  Greeks  adore  him  —  he  was  adamant.  As 
constitutional  commander  in  chief  of  the  army  he  issued  a  formal 
order  against  any  demonstration.  He  put  the  entire  weight  of 
his  popularity  in  the  scale  to  prevent  what  might  have  proved 
a  hideous  business  both  for  Greece  and  for  France  and  Eng- 
land.    He  asked  his  people,  as  they  loved  him,  to  raise  no  hand 

xiii 


FOREWORD 

nis   departure.     That   same   night   Premier  Za'i'mis 

J  Jonnart  that  "  His  Majesty  the  King,  as  ever  niind- 

tul  of  the  interest  of  Greece,  has  decided  to  leave  the  country 

with  the  crown  prince,  and  designates  as  his  successor  Prince 

Alexander.'* 

Despite  this  immediate  and  complete  acceptance  of  Jonnart's 
demands,  the  French  seemed  unable  to  resist  the  temptation  to 
beat  the  drum  and  rattle  the  saber.  Though  there  was  neither 
need  nor  excuse  for  it,  a  French  infantry  brigade,  a  regiment 
of  artillery,  and  a  regiment  of  Russian  mercenaries  were  landed 
in  the  Pireus  and  marched  against  Athens.  It  was  a  mad  thing 
to  do,  and  only  the  utmost  personal  efforts  of  the  king  avoided 
that  open  conflict  which  the  French  seemed  determined  to 
provoke. 

One  June  12  King  Constantine,  Queen  Sophie,  and  their 
children.  Crown  Prince  George  and  the  princesses  Helen  and 
Irene,  left  Greece.  It  is  characteristic  that  King  Constantine 
refused  to  embark  on  any  save  a  Greek  ship.  They  went 
directly  to  Switzerland,  where  they  are  still  living  very  modestly 
in  a  hotel,  like  any  other  transients. 

No  sooner  were  the  French  in  absolute  military  control  of 
Greece  than  the  guaranty  given  by  Jonnart  that  no  reprisals 
against  the  supporters  of  King  Constantine  would  be  tolerated 
was  ignored.  The  French  demanded  and  obtained,  within  a 
week  of  giving  the  pledge  in  question,  thirty  prominent  Greeks, 
who  were  placed  under  arrest,  without  trial,  and  taken  to 
Corsica.  A  long  series  of  arrests,  trials  by  drum-head  courts 
martial,  executions,  banishments,  and  imprisonments  followed, 
until  finally  the  ghastly  train  of  political  persecutions  was 
halted  by  the  mediation  of  the  American  minister. 

On  June  21  Jonnart  summoned  Venizelos  from  Saloniki,  and 
on  June  24  he  informed  Prince  Alexander,  recently  sworn  in  as 
King  of  the  Hellenes,  that  Venizelos  would  be  made  prime  min- 
ister. At  the  same  time  Jonnart  also  ordered  the  convocation 
of  the  last  Boule  in  which  Venizelos  had  a  majority  to  give  a 

xiv 


FOREWORD 

certain  semblance  of  representative  government  to  this  admin- 
istration wholly  imposed  by  France.  On  June  27  Venizclos 
and  his  new  cabinet  took  office. 

These  events  were  in  progress  when  this  book  was  about  to 
appear.  In  certain  quarters  it  was  felt  that  its  publication  at 
that  precise  moment  would  embarrass  our  associates  in  the 
war.  This  intimation  was  convc3'ed  to  the  publishers.  I  had 
already  expressed  mj'  willingness  to  follow  whatever  course 
(might  be  thought  wise  in  the  matter  of  the  publication  of  the 
book.     Its  issue  was  therefore  postponed. 

The  smoke  of  war  has  since,  in  some  measure,  cleared  away. 
It  is  now  generally  known,  and  our  Government  has  been  con- 
vinced, that  the  charge  repeatedly  brought  against  King 
Constantine  that  he  had  any  understanding  either  written  or 
verbal  with  Germany  or  any  one  in  Germany,  or  that  he  was 
moved  in  the  exercise  of  his  constitutional  duties  by  any  con- 
siderations whatever  save  the  good  of  his  country  and  the  will 
of  his  people,  was  wholly  without  foundation.  Press  despatches 
from  London  and  Paris  reporting  that  King  Constantine  or 
Queen  Sophie  had  gone  to  Germany  when  they  left  Greece,  that 
Crown  Prince  George  had  volunteered  for  service  with  the 
German  Army,  and  a  constant  stream  of  similar  propaganda, 
have  proved  to  be  as  groundless  as  the  accusations  against 
King  Constantine  which  were  floated  to  excuse  in  some  degree 
the  action  taken  against  him  by  France,  with  the  acquiescence  of 
Great  Britain. 

All  of  this  is  of  little  consequence.  What  is  of  great  conse- 
quence, however,  is  that  during  the  war  and  after  our  entry 
into  it  as  an  ally  of  France  and  Great  Britain,  without  our 
knowledge  and  consent  the  constitution  of  a  little,  but  a  brave 
and  fine,  people  was  nullified  by  the  joint  action  of  two  of  our 
allies;  the  neutrality  of  a  small  country  was  violated,  the  will 
of  its  people  set  at  naught,  its  laws  broken,  its  citizens  perse- 
cuted, its  press  muzzled.  By  force  a  government  was  imposed 
upon  this  free  people,  and  by  force  that  government  has  been 

XV 


FOREWORD 

and  is  to-day  maintained  in  absolute  power.  In  the  words  of 
General  Sarrail,  "  Vcnizclist  Greece  has  become  a  British 
dominion."  '  He  might  have  added  a  French  colony  as  well, 
and  been  within  the  truth. 

'J'he  process  by  which  this  was  brought  about  is  herein  set 
forth  in  detail.  It  is  not  a  pretty  story.  Whether  our  allies 
did  or  not,  a  great  many  Americans  went  into  this  war  with 
very  definite  ideals.  They  agreed  witi;  the  President  that  "  no 
peace  can  last,  or  ought  to  last,  which  does  not  recognize  and 
accci)t  the  principle  that  governments  derive  all  their  just 
powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed,"  and  they  fought 
"  that  no  nation  should  seek  to  extend  its  polity  over  any  other 
nation  or  people,  but  that  every  people  should  be  left  free  to 
determine  its  own  polity,  its  own  way  of  development,  unhin- 
dered, unthreatened,  unafraid,  the  little  along  with  the  great 
and  powerful." 

We  have  been  sorely  disillusioned,  but  we  have  not  lost  our 
ideal  or  our  faith  in  the  principles  for  which  we  fought.  We 
still  believe  that  "  they  are  the  principles  of  mankind,  and 
must  prevail." 

The  time  has  come  when  Greece  is  entitled  to  a  hearing. 
That  is  why  I  am  publishing  this  book  now  just  as  it  was  written 
three  years  ago. 

New  York,  May  1,  1920. 

1  La  Gr^ce  Veniz61iste.    "  La  Revue  de  Paris,"  December  15,  1919. 


XVI 


CONTENTS 
PART  I 

CHAPTER  INTRIGUE  PAGE 

I  Greece  IN  1914 3 

II  Greece  in  the  First  Half  of  1915  .  17 

III  The  Serbl\n  Treaty 34. 

IV  The  Saloniki  Adventure  ....  53 
V  Serbia  Abandoned 68 

VI     The  First  Blockade 89 

VII     Constaxtine  I  Takes  a  Stand       .      .    107 
VIII     Wheels  Within  Wheels  ....    125 

PART  II 

coercion 

IX     Encroachments 143 

X     King  Constantine  Speaks  His  Mind  .    158 

XI     The  Question  of  Good  Faith  .      .      .    173 

XII     Venizelos  Attacks  His  King  .      .      .    188 

XIII  The  Transport  of  the  Serbs  .      .      .    205 

XIV  Fort  Rupel 221 

XV     The  First  Ultimatum 234 

XVI     The  Bulgarian  Invasion  ....   252 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  FAOE 

XVII     The  Warrior  King  Unsheathes  His 

Sword 276 

PART  III 

STARVATION 

XYIII     The  Second  Ultimatum    ....   293 

XIX     A  Cabinet  Formed  for  War  .      .      .    310 

XX     Venizelos  Declares  Revolution  .      .   333 

XXI     The  Entente  Refuses  Greece  as  an 

Ally 347 

XXII     The  Seizure  of  the  Greek  Fleet       .    365 

XXIII     The    Venizelist     Invasion     of     Old 

Greece 386 

XXIV     Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  in  Con- 
trol         404 

XXV     The  Battle  of  Athens       ....  440 

XXVI     Anathema! 473 

XXVII     The  Unending  Blockade  ....  526 

Epilogue 547 

Appendices 551 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The  Author Frontispiec« 

Autograph  Notes  made  by  Foreign  Minister  Zo- 

graphos 24 

Constantine  I 49 

"General  de  Lardemelle  was  at  Kafardar"  ...      75 

King  Peter  of  Serbia  at  Aedypsos 85 

"The  Greek  Evacuation  of  Saloniki  Began"   .      .151 

The  French  Laying  Out  their  Camp  at  Zeitenlik  .    185 

Sarrail's  Cretan  Police SID 

Andrew,  Prince  of  Greece 265 

Princess  Alice  of  Battenberg 303 

Greek  Artillery  at  Cavalla 321 

Rear  Admiral  Hubert  Cardale,  R.H.N.    .      .      .375 

"What  was  left  of  the  Irish  Brigade  was  of  some 

use" • 397 

George,  Duke  of  Sparta 431 

"The  Rolling  Stock  Waiting  in  Saloniki  the  Com- 
pletion of  the  Athens-Saloniki  Railway"  .       .    449 

General  Sarrail 475 

The  Anathema  of  Venizelos 519 


CONSTANTINE  I 

AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 


CONSTANTINE  I 

AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 
CHAPTER  I 

GEEECE    IN    1914 

"The  cardinal  error  of  the  Entente  powers  has 
been  to  consider  their  Balkan  problem  as  a  polit- 
ical question,  not  a  military  one.  They  have 
never  taken  the  Balkans  seriously  as  a  field  for 
military  operations.  They  have  tried  by  intrigue 
to  get  something  for  nothing,  without  risk  to 
themselves,  in  Bulgaria,  in  Serbia,  in  Rumania, 
and  in  Greece.  If  they  had  spent  a  tenth  the  ef- 
fort in  studying  and  carrying  out  a  serious  mili- 
tary campaign  in  the  Balkans  that  they  have  in 
dabbling  in  the  internal  politics  of  the  various 
Balkan  States,  they  would  have  succeeded  where 
they  have  failed.  And  the  war  would  probably 
be  over  by  now." 

Thus  King  Constantine  of  Greece,  after  two 

3 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  a  half  years  of  experience  with  the  pohey  of 
the  Entente  powers  in  the  Balkans.  Essentially 
a  soldier  himself,  the  military  side  naturally  looms 
large  to  him.  Fundamentally  direct,  sincere,  and 
incapable  of  intrigue,  he  despises  the  jockeying 
between  the  Entente  diplomatists  and  the  various 
party  leaders  in  the  Balkan  States,  which  has  re- 
sulted in  a  splitting  of  the  Balkans  among  them- 
selves to  the  disaster  of  the  countries  concerned. 
Finally,  a  man  of  action,  used  to  the  quick  de- 
cisions of  the  battle-field,  the  King  of  the  Hel- 
lenes has  been  frankly  intolerant  of  the  subtleties 
of  diplomatists,  and,  above  all,  of  the  hesitations  of 
the  governments  of  the  Allied  powers.  IMuch  of 
the  legend  of  his  pro-Germanism  arises  from  his 
appreciation  of  the  unerring  speed  with  which  the 
German  designs  in  the  Balkans  have  been  carried 
out.  King  Constantine  lives  in  the  Balkans.  It 
is  his  sphere  of  action,  and  he  knows  his  Balkans 
like  a  book.  To  him,  therefore,  it  is  less  signifi- 
cant that  the  French  defeated  the  Germans  at  the 
Battle  of  the  Marne  or  held  them  at  Verdun  than 
that  the  French  marched  into  Serbia  a  year  later 
— and  then  marched  out  again,  leaving  the  Serbs 
to  be  crushed.     This  is  the  view  of  every  Greek 


GREECE  IN  1914 

and  everj^  Serb ;  indeed,  of  every  man  in  the  Bal- 
kans. His  horizon  is  bounded  by  the  interests 
vital  to  him  and  his  country.  The  Allied  powers 
are  judged  in  the  Balkans  by  what  they  have  ac- 
complished there,  not  in  France,  Italy,  or  Russia. 
It  is  largely  for  this  reason  that  the  judgment  is 
not  favorable  and  that  to-day  the  influence  of  the 
Entente  powers  is  weaker  in  the  Balkans  than 
anywhere  else  in  the  world. 

I  met  King  Constantine  for  the  first  time  early 
in  September,  1915,  at  his  country  chateau,  "De- 
kaleia,"  some  fifteen  miles  from  Athens,  at 
Tatoy,  on  the  slopes  of  Mount  Parnes.  I  had 
just  come  from  France  and  Italy,  and  the 
king  was  eager  for  the  trained  impressions  of  a 
correspondent  who  had  seen  both  sides  of  the 
great  conflict.  His  questions  were  those  of  a 
soldier  seeking  to  divine  the  relative  values  of  the 
warring  armies  and  their  respective  chances  of 
success.  As  he  talked  with  perfect  frankness 
and  deep  interest  in  the  subject,  he  was  himself 
a  study.  For  King  Constantine  I  looks  every 
inch  a  king — and  there  are  a  good  many  inches 
to  look  it,  as  the  Greek  sovereign  is  six  foot  six 
and  weighs  about  two  hundred  and  thirty  pounds. 

5 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Just  at  that  period  he  was  thin  from  his  recent 
ilkiess,  however,  and  was  in  flannels,  not  uniform. 
But  he  is  impressive  in  any  costume.  More 
democratic,  perhaps,  than  any  monarch  of  his  day, 
he  has  known  always  how  to  keep  the  authority 
of  kingship  about  him.  When  httle  Princess 
Catherine,  his  youngest  child,  was  born  during 
the  Second  Balkan  War,  King  Constantine  made 
the  army  and  navy  of  Greece  her  godfathers. 
In  the  Greek  Church  the  fact  creates  a  relation- 
ship between  the  real  father  and  the  godfather 
which  is  expressed  by  the  Greek  word  koum- 
haros.  King  Constantine  is,  therefore,  the 
koujnbaros  of  each  soldier-  and  each  sailor  of 
Greece.  As  such,  he  is  intimate  with  them,  and 
they  with  him;  they  regard  him  as  a  soldier,  like 
themselves,  and  he  looks  upon  himself  as  a  soldier, 
like  the  least  of  his  subjects.  For  in  Greece 
every  able-bodied  man  is  a  soldier. 

But  when  he  is  being  king,  he  is  king  indeed. 
On  occasions  of  ceremony,  in  full  dress,  with  blue 
and  white  plumes  on  his  helmet  and  marshal's 
baton  in  hand,  he  is  the  personification  of  maj- 
esty. He  drops  the  vernacular,  which  he  is  ac- 
customed to  use  with  his  soldiers.     He  embodies 

6 


GREECE  IN  1914 

the  idea  of  sovereignty  as  few  men  have  em- 
bodied that  idea  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

King  Constantine  then  stated  very  frankly 
the  thesis  he  has  always  since  maintained,  that 
in  principle  the  present  war  is  one  of  great 
states  with  huge  armies  and  inmiense  reservoirs 
of  credit ;  that  for  a  small  state  to  enter  the  war 
voluntarily  is  madness,  unless  the  small  state 
is  able  to  discount  a  decided  advantage  to  be 
secured  in  no  other  way ;  and,  finally,  that  the  es- 
sential condition  of  the  participation  of  a  small 
state  in  the  general  European  hostilities  must  be 
a  definite  program  of  immediate  action,  having 
at  least  a  prevailing  chance  of  rapid  success. 

On  the  latter  point  the  ideas  of  the  King  of 
the  Hellenes  in  respect  to  his  own  country  were 
very  clear.  He  pointed  out  that  Greece  is  to- 
day, and  has  been  since  the  Turkish  War  of  1897, 
in  the  hands  of  a  receiver;  that  while  the  last 
two  successful  Balkan  wars  had  doubled  the  ter- 
ritory of  Hellas,  they  had  also  cost  a  vast  deal 
of  money  and,  in  the  new  territory  acquired,  had 
opened  up  an  endless  vista  of  expenditures  for 
the  development  of  the  islands,  Epirus,  and  Mace- 
donia that  would  require   a  considerable   capi- 

7 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

talization  to  carry  out.  A  war — especially  such 
a  war  as  that  now  raging — would  sink  Greece 
further  in  the  mire  of  insolvency  and  put  off  for 
years,  perhaps  for  generations,  the  work  of  re- 
building and  consolidating  his  doubled  kingdom. 

Moreover,  King  Constantine  laid  stress  on  the 
fact  that  the  increase  in  the  number  of  in- 
habitants of  Greece  through  the  accession  of  the 
redeemed  provinces  had  added  many  hetero- 
geneous elements  to  the  population  of  the  coun- 
try— elements  to  a  certain  extent  not  even  Greek, 
and  accustomed  to  a  concept  of  responsibilities  of 
government  wholly  at  variance  with  the  essential 
democracy  of  Hellas.  Under  Ottoman  rule  the 
Greek  got  what  he  wanted  by  paying  bakshish; 
under  the  democracy  of  Greece  he  must  secure 
what  he  requires  by  passing  laws  which  will  be 
equal  for  all,  and  by  personally  bearing  his  share 
of  the  heavy  burden  of  taxation,  the  heritage  of 
generations  of  costly  struggle  for  the  freedom  of 
the  Greeks. 

The  territory  acquired  by  the  Balkan  wars — 
Macedonia,  Epirus,  and  the  Greek  islands — has 
a  population  of  2,066,647,  as  against  a  total  popu- 
lation of  2,631,972  for  Greece  before  their  ac- 

8 


GREECE  IN  1914 

quisition.^  The  work  of  consolidating  this  im- 
mense accretion  of  new  citizens  must  necessarily 
be  long  and  difficult.  For  its  accomplishment, 
King  Constantine  declared  peace  to  be  essential. 

Plainly  the  Greek  monarch  did  not  share  the 
dreams  of  still  further  aggrandizement  for  Hel- 
las voiced  by  his  prime  minister,  E.  K.  Venize- 
los.  Indeed,  the  sovereign  looked  upon  any  im- 
mediate increase  in  the  size  of  Greece  as  a  con- 
tingency fraught  with  peril  for  the  Hellenistic 
ideal,  kept  burning  in  old  Greece  through  the  cen- 
turies. 

"Mind  you,"  he  said,  "I  do  not  say  we  shall  not 
go  to  war, — on  the  side  of  the  Entente,  of  course, 
— as  all  our- interests  are  bound  up  with  the  En- 
tente. We  could  not  go  to  war  against  the  En- 
tente, and  nobody  in  Greece  dreams  of  doing  it. 
But  if  we  enter  the  war  at  all,  it  will  have  to  be 
with  a  fixed  role  which  can  be  quickly  played  to 
success  or  failure  before  the  country  has  been 
ruined  by  a  long  campaign."' 

In  September,  1915,  Constantine  I  saw  for 
Greece  no  prospect  of  playing  such  a  part.  Im- 
mediately after  the  outbreak  of  the  European 

1  Census  of  1907. 

9 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

War,  a  cabinet  council  under  the  presidency  of  the 
King  of  the  Hellenes,  and  with  his  hearty  concur- 
rence, expressed  the  sympathy  of  Greece  with  the 
Entente  powers  and  more  particularly  with  her 
Balkan  ally,  Serbia,  and  decided  that  Greece 
should  maintain  an  attitude  characterized  as  one 
of  "benevolent  neutrality"  toward  Serbia  and  her 
alhes  in  the  Great  War. 

King  Constantine,  moreover,  rejected  without 
a  moment's  hesitation  a  German  offer  to  join  the 
Central  empires  in  return  for  Monastir  and  the 
surrounding  parts  of  Serbia,  which  are  inhabited 
largely  by  Greeks.  By  this  refusal  the  Greco- 
Serbian  treaty  of  alliance  of  May  19,  1913,  re- 
mained intact;  but  construed  by  the  Greek  Gov- 
ernment as  apphcable  only  to  Balkan  warfare,  it 
was  not  called  into  play.  Saloniki  was  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  Serbs  as  the  door  through  which  their 
war  material  might  enter.  The  best  information 
and  advice  of  the  Greek  general  staff  was  at  their 
call.  The  Greeks  granted  Admiral  Hubert  S. 
Cardale  of  the  British  naval  mission  in  Greece, 
serving  by  virtue  of  that  position  as  an  officer  in 
the  Royal  Hellenic  Navy,  leave  of  absence  to  go 
to  Serbia  to  serve  with  the  British  naval  unit 

10 


GREECE  IN  1914 

defending  Belgrade.  The  Greeks  lent  the  Serbs 
money,  arms,  supplies,  and  men,  and  in  every 
way  of  practical,  unsentimental  value  aided 
Serbia  to  the  utmost. 

This  was  not  sufficient,  however,  in  the  view  of 
Premier  Venizelos.  He  did  not  share  his  sov- 
ereign's apprehensions  of  danger  within  the 
Greek  state  from  further  territorial  increases, 
like  inverted  pyramids  of  population  where  only 
the  apex  was  actively  Greek.  To  Venizelos  the 
present  war  was  an  opportunity  for  aggrandize- 
ment of  Hellas  such  as  would  never  come  again. 
He  wanted  to  profit  at  once  and  to  the  utmost 
from  the  opportunity  by  throwing  Greece  uncon- 
ditionally into  the  arms  of  the  Entente  powers. 
He  was  impatient  of  any  caution  or  of  any  well- 
considered  plan  of  cooperation,  consumed  only 
by  a  fear  lest  the  war  should  end  before  Greece, 
by  her  participation,  should  have  gained  vast 
territorial  compensations  in  Asia  INIinor  or  else- 
where, a  smaller  dream  of  empire  than  that  con- 
ceived by  the  German  kaiser,  but  not  less  im- 
perialistic. 

On  August  18,  1914,  this  difference  in  view  as 
to  the  stand  Greece  should  take  toward  Europe 

11 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

at  war  came  to  a  head.  The  Greek  foreign  minis- 
ter, Dr.  George  Streit,  an  international  jurist  of 
world-wide  reputation  and  one  of  the  judges  of 
The  Hague  Court,  resigned  from  the  Venizelos 
cabinet,  in  consequence.  Sir  Edward  Grey 
finally  telegraphed  the  Greek  premier  that  his 
persistence  was  embarrassing  to  the  British  Gov- 
ermnent  and  advised  Venizelos  to  cease  for  the 
moment  his  warlike  propaganda  in  Greece.  The 
same  month  Great  Britain  suggested  tentatively 
that  Greece  cede  Cavalla  to  Bulgaria  as  a  means 
of  securing  the  cooperation  or  at  least  the 
friendly  neutraHty  of  Greece's  late  enemy.  The 
mere  suggestion  nearly  caused  the  fall  of  the 
Venizelos  cabinet,  so  much  opposition  was  there  in 
Greece  to  the  surrender  of  any  of  the  territory 
recently  won  from  Bulgaria.  Sir  Edward  Grey 
accordingly  dropped  the  matter,  to  return  to  it  in 
January,  1915. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  Entente  powers,  un- 
der the  threat  of  a  second  Austrian  invasion  of 
Serbia,  finally  summoned  Greece  in  October, 
1914,  to  apply  the  Greco-Serbian  treaty  and  come 
to  the  aid  of  her  ally  in  the  struggle  against 
Austria.    It  was  Venizelos  who  refused  this  time, 

12 


GREECE  IN  1914 

making  the  cooperation  of  Bulgaria  and  Rumania 
in  the  hostilities  against  Austria  a  condition  prec- 
edent to  Greece's  leaving  neutrality.  Further 
insistence  on  the  part  of  France  and  Great  Brit- 
ain, and  even  a  promise  to  send  two  divisions 
of  French  and  British  troops  as  a  moral  pres- 
sure to  keep  Bulgaria  at  least  neutral,  were  un- 
availing. Serbia  was  alread}^  being  overrun  by 
her  enemy,  but  INIr.  Venizelos  could  not  be  per- 
suaded that  the  Greco- Serbian  treaty  required 
Greece  to  succor  her  ally  so  long  as  Bulgaria  re- 
mained a  menace  on  the  flank  of  any  Greek  army 
that  might  march  into  Serbia.  Every  effort  to 
move  Rumania  proved  equally  fruitless.  Greece, 
at  the  instance  of  Austria  and  Germany,  trans- 
mitted to  Serbia  a  proposal  of  separate  peace. 
The  Serbs  refused.  When  the  second  invasion 
of  Serbia  had  failed  and  the  Austrians  had  again 
been  swept  across  the  Danube,  Greece  was  still 
neutral — under  the  government  of  Mr.  Venizelos, 
whom,  four  months  previously,  the  British  foreign 
secretary  had  been  at  some  pains  to  hold  in  check 
lest  he  thrust  Greece  willy-nilly  into  war  on  the 
side  of  the  Entente. 

At  that  time  Venizelos  gave  as  his  reason  for 
13 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

not  leaving  neutrality  the  fear  that  Bulgaria 
would  join  the  Central  empires  and  attack 
Greece.  Nine  months  later,  when  Bulgaria  had 
actually  joined  the  Central  empires  and  was 
ready  to  attack  Greece,  the  same  Venizelos,  no 
longer  a  prime  minister  responsible  to  the  Greek 
people,  maintained  that  the  Greco- Serbian 
treaty  required  Greece  to  assist  Serbia  even 
against  a  combined  attack  by  the  Germans, 
Austrians,  and  Bulgarians.  Speaking  of  the 
Greco- Serbian  treaty  a  year  later,  in  October, 
1915,  he  declared,  "The  feeling  of  loyalty  to  our 
national  obligations  has  never  wavered  even  for 
a  moment." 

Throughout  the  present  war  the  attitude  of  each 
of  the  Balkan  States  has  been  influenced  more 
by  that  of  the  remaining  States  than  by  any  other 
consideration.  Greece  has  been  closely  allied 
with  Serbia  since  1913,  but  not  with  Rumania. 
Nevertheless,  all  three  States  were  moved  during 
the  first  year  of  the  war  by  the  same  fear:  that 
Bulgaria,  with  the  assistance  of  Turkey  and  per- 
haps of  Germany  and  Austria,  would  seek  to  an- 
nul the  treaty  of  Bukharest  and  regain  the  terri- 
tory of  which  she  had  been  deprived  at  the  con- 

14 


GREECE  IN  1914 

elusion  of  the  Second  Balkan  War.  From  the 
moment  of  Turkey's  entry  into  the  European 
conflict,  in  November,  1914,  the  alinement  in  the 
Balkans  was  evident:  Bulgaria  and  Turkey  on 
one  side;  Greece,  Serbia,  and  Rumania  on  the 
other.  It  was  a  condition,  not  a  theory.  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey's  plan  to  reconstitute  the  Balkan  block 
of  1912  was  mere  theory,  taking  no  account  of 
Bulgaria's  deep-seated  resentment  against  the 
treaty  of  Bukharest  and  her  scarcely  concealed 
intention  to  overthrow  its  decisions  at  the  first 
propitious  moment. 

In  fostering  the  reconstitution  of  the  Balkan 
block,  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  counseled,  perhaps 
led,  bj^  Prime  Minister  Venizelos,^  who  in  the  ne- 
gotiation of  the  treaty  of  Bucharest  had  already 
shown  himself  disposed  to  make  concessions  to 
conquered  Bulgaria.  The  first  point  of  differ- 
ence between  the  Greek  premier  and  his  sov- 
ereign was  upon  this  head.  The  king,  a  trained 
soldier,  preferred  to  regard  Turkey  and  Bul- 

1  In  this  view  of  Mr.  Venizelos's  responsibility  for  the  Allied 
policy  in  Greece  at  this  period,  ray  friend  and  colleague,  George 
Renwick,  correspondent  of  "The  Daily  Chronicle,"  agrees.  "M. 
Venizelos  aimed  at  the  reconstruction  of  the  Balkan  League  on  a 
somewhat  extended  basis,"  he  writes  in  "War  Wanderings,"  p. 
250. 

15 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

garia  as  the  potential  enemies  of  Greece  their 
policy  had  shown  them,  and  to  bend  every  energy 
to  assure  his  army  sufficient  support  from  west- 
ern Europe  to  drive  a  war  with  them  to  a  defi- 
nite, final  conclusion.  His  plan  was  not  to  treat 
with  Turkey  and  Bulgaria,  but  to  defeat  them, 
break  the  power  of  Turkey  in  Europe  forever, 
and  limit  Bulgaria  to  the  comparatively  scant 
confines  of  the  territory  actually  inhabited  in 
majority  by  Bulgarians. 

The  British  policy  was  guided  rather  by  the 
subtle  diplomacy  of  Venizelos  than  by  the  frank, 
militaiy  point  of  view  of  King  Constantine.  In- 
deed, throughout  the  Entente  negotiations  with 
Greece  a  certain  recurring  coincidence  between 
the  advocacy  by  Mr.  Venizelos  of  a  policy  in  re- 
spect to  Greece  and  the  adoption  of  an  identical 
policy  in  respect  to  Greece  by  the  governments 
of  London  and  Paris  leads  to  the  assumption 
that  the  action  of  the  Entente  in  the  Balkans  was 
rather  directed  by  Mr.  Venizelos  than  conceived 
in  France  or  Great  Britain. 


16 


CHAPTER  II 

GREECE   IN   THE   FIRST   HALF   OF    1915 

Two  days  before  the  war  council  in  London 
debated  the  question  of  an  attack  on  the  Dar- 
danelles, Venizelos  presented  to  his  sovereign 
a  memorandum,  dated  January  11,^  setting  forth 
certain  rather  vague  inducements  held  out  early 
in  January,  1915,  by  the  Allied  powers  to  Greece 
to  enter  into  the  war  by  joining  the  Dardanelles 
adventure.  To  guarantee  Bulgaria's  neutrality 
(and  Venizelos  scarcely  ventured  to  hope  to  se- 
cure more  than  neutrality  from  Bulgaria)  the 
Greek  prime  minister  proposed  that  Greece  re- 
store to  the  Bulgars  the  port  and  province  of 
Cavalla,  recently  won  from  them,  and  that  she 
urge  even  greater  sacrifices  in  favor  of  Bulgaria 
on  the  part  of  her  ally,  Serbia.  An  effort  was 
also  to  be  made  to  secure  Rumania's  cooperation 
with  Serbia  and  Bulgaria  in  joining  the  Entente's 
operations  against  Turkey. 

The  day  following  the  war  council's  definite  de- 

1  Appendix  1. 

IT 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

cision  to  undertake  a  naval  attack  upon  the  Dar- 
danelles, Venizelos  laid  before  his  sovereign  an- 
other memorandum,  dated  January  17,^  revealing 
Rumania's  refusal  to  take  part  in  the  enterprise 
and  forecasting  that  all  concessions  he  was  urg- 
ing would  obtain  at  most  only  the  neutrality  of 
Bulgaria.  Nevertheless,  in  this  as  in  the  first 
memorandum,  Venizelos  was  eloquent  in  his  in- 
sistence that  the  AUied  offers  be  accepted  at  once. 
His  original  proposal  of  the  cession  of  Cavalla 
is  enlarged  to  the  cession  of  the  whole  of  the 
"Cazas,"  or  districts  of  Sah-Chaban,  Cavalla,  and 
Drama,  probably  the  richest  piece  of  land  for 
its  size  in  the  whole  world.  In  return  he  speaks 
of  vast  possessions  in  Asia  Minor  of  which  the 
most  he  can  say  in  the  way  of  assurance  from  the 
Entente  is,  "I  believe  that,  if  we  ask,  there  may 
be  considerable  probability  of  our  request's  being 
granted."  In  the  same  breath  in  which  he  speaks 
of  Serbia's  "obligation  of  alliance  and  motives 
of  gratitude"  toward  Greece  he  coolly  proposes 
to  despoil  this  harrassed  ally  of  the  Doiran- 
Ghevgheli  sector  of  Serbia,  which,  he  says,  "we 
shall  also  demand." 

1  Appendix  1. 

18 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

As  political  documents  Venizelos's  two  memo- 
randa to  King  Constantine  are  without  prece- 
dent in  history.  He  transplants  the  populations 
of  whole  provinces;  he  outlines  Bulgaria's  proh- 
able  future  course  as  if  he  himself  were  directing 
it ;  Serbia  is  moved  about  like  a  pawn  on  a  chess- 
board; he  disposes  of  the  armies  of  the  Entente 
as  if  he  were  their  commander-in-chief;  and 
brushes  aside  as  a  mere  detail  the  administrative 
difficulties  of  Ottoman  territory  double  the  size 
of  present  Greece.  Throughout  he  writes  with 
the  exaltation  of  one  carried  away  by  a  great 
enthusiasm;  "an  opportunity  furnished  by  Divine 
Providence  to  reahze  our  most  audacious  national 
ideals"  is  his  phrase.  Moral  considerations  in 
favor  of  the  action  he  supports  appear  only  par- 
enthetically in  his  first  memorandum;  they  dis- 
appear altogether  in  the  second.  His  whole 
argument  is  that  Greece  will  again  be  doubled  in 
size, — quadruple  what  she  was  in  1912, — and  the 
tone  of  the  memoranda  is  that  of  a  man  who  has 
been  taken  up  into  a  high  mountain  and  shown 
the  world,  and  has  chosen  the  world. 

The  conclusion  of  a  large  Bulgarian  loan  in 
Berlin,  however,  cooled  the  ardor  of  the  British 

19 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  conciliate  Bulgaria,  albeit  the  fact  dimmed 
nothing  of  Venizelos's  purpose.  It  required  a 
message  from  Sir  Edward  Grey  that  "there  could 
be  no  question  of  a  cession  to  Bulgaria  for  the 
present"  to  check  Mr.  Venizelos's  political  cam- 
paign in  Greece  to  that  end. 

Nevertheless,  the  negotiations  for  Greece's  par- 
ticipation in  the  expedition  against  Constantino- 
ple continued  in  a  desultory  way.  Both  King 
Constantine  and  his  general  staff  favored  the  en- 
terprise, if  undertaken  upon  serious  military 
bases.  The  consideration  being  given  the  venture 
by  the  British  war  council  struck  them,  however, 
as  haphazard  and  based  upon  no  real  knowledge 
of  the  difficulties  of  the  undertaking.  The  Greek 
staff  had  spent  years  in  the  study  of  every  possible 
method  of  taking  the  Turkish  capital,  the  dream 
of  every  Greek  for  five  hundred  years.  A  purely 
naval  attack  was,  in  their  estimation,  doomed  to 
certain  failure.  When  he  learned  that  precisely 
this  was  under  consideration,  King  Constantine 
sent  two  of  his  best  staff  officers  to  Malta  with  the 
Greek  staff's  own  plans  to  demonstrate  the  folly 
of  a  purely  naval  movement  and  to  propose  sev- 
eral alternative  operations,  each  dependent  upon 

20 


GREECE  IX  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

the  sending  of  a  very  considerable  Allied  land 
expedition  to  work  in  conjunction  with  the 
Greeks. 

Despite  this  warning,  tlte  first  Allied  bombard- 
ment of  the  straits  took  place  on  February  19, 
1915.  Not  only  were  no  troops  landed  in  support 
of  the  naval  expedition,  but  the  attack  was  made 
when  no  troops  were  available.  The  bombard- 
ment served  no  purpose  save  to  apprise  the  Turks 
that  the  Entente  was  preparing  to  strike  directly 
at  Constantinople.  It  gave  them  plenty  of 
leisure  in  which  to  complete  an  impregnable  for- 
tification both  of  the  Dardanelles  and  Gallipoli — 
a  leisure  which  they  employed  immediately  and 
well.  This  fruitless  enterprise,  projected  by  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill  in  August,  1914,  for  which  in 
five  months  no  serious  military  preparations  had 
been  made,  not  only  put  the  Turks  on  their  guard, 
but  betrayed  to  the  Greeks  the  weakness  and  lack 
of  plan  in  the  Entente  policy  in  the  near  East. 
It  became  at  once  evident  to  the  Greek  staff  that 
if,  upon  joining  the  Entente,  Greece  were  to 
protect  herself  effectually  from  disaster,  she  must 
do  so  by  her  own  caution  and  intelligence.  The 
Allies  could  not  be  counted  upon  to  appreciate 

21 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

the  extent  of  their  own  blunders,  much  less  not 
to  sacrifice  Greece  to  an  ill-chosen  and  carelessly 
executed  adventure. 

Following  the  failure  of  the  naval  bombard- 
ment of  February  19,  the  Entente  acquired  re- 
spect for  the  Greek  staff's  suggestion  of  a  simul- 
taneous land  and  naval  expedition  against  the 
Dardanelles.  Negotiations  were  reopened  with 
Greece  with  this  in  view.  On  March  1,  Mr. 
Venizelos  proposed  that  Greece  participate  with 
her  fleet  and  an  army  corps  of  three  divisions,  the 
Entente  furnishing  the  remainder  of  the  land 
force  to  be  employed  in  the  attack.  During  the 
discussion  of  the  details  of  the  enterprise  the 
Greek  staff,  taught  caution  in  dealing  with  the 
Entente  by  the  naval  fiasco  of  February  19,  took 
the  view  that,  with  the  Bulgarian  attitude  still 
undefined,  Greece  could  not  in  conscience  risk 
more  than  a  division  of.  her  land  army,  albeit 
willing  to  add  the  entire  Greek  fleet  to  the  En- 
tente's  naval  forces.  This  arrangement  King 
Constantine  accepted  in  principle  on  March  4, 
and  Great  Britain  charged  General  Sir  Arthur 
Paget  to  report  upon  the  attitude  of  Bulgaria 
with  a  view  to  disposing  of  the  Greek  staff's  hesi- 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

tations  on  that  head.  The  emissary  was  ill 
chosen.  Sir  Arthur  Paget's  predilection  in  favor 
of  Bulgaria  was  well  known  in  Greece.  Not 
even  Mr.  Venizelos  would  have  dared  to  act  upon 
his  judgment  of  Bulgaria's  intentions. 

The  question  of  the  inten^ention  of  Greece  in 
the  war  at  this  juncture,  however,  was  decided 
upon  other  and  entirely  unexpected  grounds. 
Russia  at  the  eleventh  hour  opposed  any  Greek 
cooperation  in  an  attack  on  Constantinople.  The 
idea  that  a  Greek  king  styled  Constantine  XII 
by  his  extreme  partizans — taking  the  numeral  in 
the  line  of  the  Greek  emperors  of  Constantinople 
—should  enter  the  "city  of  Constantine"  a  victor 
was  too  much  for  them.  They  insisted  that  if 
the  help  of  the  Greeks  be  accepted  at  all,  it  be 
used  against  the  Austrians,  not  against  the  Turks. 

Unfortunately  for  this  disposition,  the  Greeks, 
who  had  nursed  five  centuries  of  hatred  of  the 
Turks,  had  no  rancor  whatever  against  the  Aus- 
trians, had  never  really  come  in  contact  with 
them,  in  fact.  The  Turkish  massacres  of  Greek 
inhabitants  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  which  had 
never  ceased  since  1913,  inflamed  the  Greeks  to 
the  fighting-point;  but  a  motive  of  this  sort  was 

S3 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

wholly  lacking  in  any  war  with  Austria.  The 
proposal  that  the  Greek  army  should  be  used  on 
the  Danube,  where  they  had  neither  interest^  nor 
animosities,  impressed  them  as  did  a  similar  sug- 
gestion that  the  Greek  troops  be  employed  for  the 
defense  of  Egypt — as  turning  the  Greek  forces 
into  an  army  of  mercenaries  to  be  moved  about 
at  the  will  of  the  more  powerful  AUied  powers. 

It  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  unfortunate 
effect  upon  Greece  of  Russia's  attitude,  especially 
in  view  of  the  reasons  for  that  attitude.  The 
Greeks  are  a  proud  people,  given  to  lending  a 
somewhat  too  great  importance  to  the  role  their 
history  has  played  in  the  development  of  the  mod- 
ern world.  Their  past  is  always  with  them,  often 
to  the  detriment  of  their  future;  and  to  deprive 
them  of  any  participation  even  in  the  Christian 
reconquest  of  Constantinople  was  too  gross  a 
wrong  to  be  stomached.  Only  those  wholly  unac- 
quainted with  the  psychology  and  the  traditions 
of  the  Greek  of  to-day  could  have  formulated  so 
wounding  a  condition  to  Greece's  cooperation 
with  the  Allies.  Negotiations  for  Greece's  en- 
try into  the  war  ceased  at  once.  Prime  Minister 
Venizelos,  failing  in  his  efforts  to  effect  an  alli- 

£4 


Ikiljid-^Ii^yi^i  ^^^^^^^^  i^>^p^  mkd,^ 


the  Allies  of  April  14,  1015.  should  be  mot 


TRANSLATION:  Act  of  1/U  Ap/ii  1915 
"Assurance  of  full  solidarity  with  her  (Greece's)  Allies;  that  is  to  Bay,  their  Buarantw  durinK  the  war  and  for  a  certain  period  toHowing 
Its  t«rminalion  of  the  intenrity  of  her  {Greece's)  continental  integrity,  including  North  Epirua.  ... 

"The  vftnous  extents  of  our  coflperation  should  be  defined  in  a  special  convention,  the  terms  of  which  should  be  fixed  in  common  accord 
"Tim  final  agreement  should  lay  down  the  -         -      -. 


C 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

ance  between  Greece  and  the  Entente,  resigned. 
But  before  he  resigned  he  permitted,  under  pa- 
per protest,  an  Allied  occupation  of  the  Greek 
islands  of  Lemnos,  Imbros,  and  Tenedos,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Dardanelles,  setting  a  precedent  for 
future  Alhed  use  of  Greek  soil  for  military  pur- 
poses. On  jNIarch  7,  King  Constantine  dissolved 
the  Boule,^  calling  for  new  elections  on  June  13. 
As  prime  minister,  in  the  interim,  he  sought  first 
the  cooperation  of  Alexander  Zaimis,  but  finally 
accepted  a  reactionary  cabinet  under  Demetrios 
Gounaris.  On  March  17,  General  Sir  Arthur 
Paget  reported  Bulgaria  safely  on  the  side  of  the 
Entente  and  perhaps  even  ready  to  join  them 
in  an  attack  upon  Turkey.  The  following  day, 
March  18,  the  Allied  attempt  to  force  the  Darda- 
nelles, still  solely  by  sea,  was  made  with  signal  un- 
success.  The  Bouvet,  Irresistible,  and  Ocean 
were  sunk.  A  number  of  other  ships  were  badly 
damaged.  The  moral  effect  on  the  Balkans  was 
immediate  and  far-reaching. 

While  negotiating  with  Greece  for  her  entry 
into  the  war  just  preceding  the  Dardanelles  at- 

1  The    Boule    is    the    Congress    of    the    representatives    of    the 
Greek  people. 

25 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

tack,  Great  Britain  had  simultaneously  been  ne- 
gotiating secretly  with  Bulgaria  for  her  coopera- 
tion, offering  King  Ferdinand  not  only  part  of 
the  territory  of  Great  Britain's  ally,  Serbia,  as 
compensation,  but  part  of  the  territory  of  Greece 
as  well.  The  failure  of  the  Dardanelles  attack 
put  an  end  to  this  discussion.  In  the  face  of  this 
setback  the  Russians  withdrew  their  objection  to 
the  participation  of  the  Greeks  in  an  expedition 
against  Constantinople.  The  French  and  British 
returned  to  their  negotiations  with  Greece,  offer- 
ing the  new  Gounaris  cabinet  one  last  chance  to 
come  in. 

King  Constantine  had  not  wavered  in  his  wil- 
lingness to  undertake  a  serious  mihtary  operation, 
and  the  occasion  now  seemed  propitious  to  define 
precisely  what  the  Greek  staff,  with  its  speciahzed 
knowledge  of  the  difficulties  to  be  met,  regarded 
as  a  serious  mihtary  operation.  Three  essential 
political  conditions  of  cooperation  were  laid  down 
in  Foreign  Minister  Zographos's  memorandum  of 
April  14,  1915:  (1)  that  Greece  be  accepted  as 
a  full  ally  of  the  Entente  powers,  the  latter 
guaranteeing  during  the  war  and  for  a  certain 
period  afterward,  the  integrity  of  Greece's  con- 

26 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

tinental  and  insular  territory,  including  north 
Epirus;  (2)  that  the  extent  and  nature  of 
Greece's  cooperation  in  the  war  be  fixed  by  a 
special  convention,  the  terms  of  which  were  to 
be  laid  down  by  the  respective  mihtary  staffs, 
in  common  accord;  (3)  that  the  final  agreement 
for  Greece's  entry  into  the  war  define  whatever 
concessions  and  territorial  compensations  it  might 
please  the  Entente  powers  to  make  Greece  for  her 
assistance. 

The  first  condition  was  to  dispose  of  any  ques- 
tion of  Great  Britain's  retaining  the  Greek  islands 
she  had  occupied  for  the  Dardanelles  expedition, 
and  to  settle  in  advance  any  claims  Italy  might  in 
future  bring  forward  to  north  Epirus.  The  sec- 
ond proviso  was  to  settle  any  possibility  of  the 
Greek  army's  being  used  in  Egypt,  on  the 
Danube,  or  on  the  French  front,  dispositions  of 
it  to  which  the  Greek  people  were  unalterably  op- 
posed. The  third  provision  was  not  a  demand  for 
compensation,  but  merely  the  expression  of  a  de- 
sire that  whatever  concessions  were  to  be  made  be 
defined,  not  left  to  be  fixed  after  the  war.  In  this 
proposal  from  the  Gounaris  cabinet  the  military 
people  of  Greece  were  speaking,  not  the  poli- 

n 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ticians.  They  felt  the  necessity  of  being  able  to 
say  to  the  Greek  whom  they  called  upon  to  fight : 
"Yon  are  fighting  to  free  your  brother  Greeks 
in  this  given  district  of  the  Turkish  Empire. 
When  you  have  won,  we  have  the  guarantee  of 
the  Entente  powers  that  those  for  whom  you  have 
fought  shall  be  free."  In  making  the  proposals, 
the  Gounaris  government  expressly  renounced 
all  expectation  of  the  cooperation  of  Bulgaria. 

On  their  side,  the  Greek  staff  proposed  to 
march  300,000  Greeks  through  Bulgaria,  and  in 
company  with  250,000  European  troops  to  attack 
Constantinople  from  the  land.  Bulgaria  was  to 
be  summoned  to  define  her  attitude.  If  she  de- 
clared hostility  to  the  Entente,  after  all  her  ne- 
gotiations to  join  the  Allied  powers,  the  Greeks 
were  quite  ready  to  finish  with  Bulgaria  first  and 
come  on  to  Constantinople  later ;  if,  however,  Bul- 
garia were  to  reiterate  her  professions  of  friend- 
ship to  the  Entente,  she  was  to  be  asked  to  prove 
it  by  permitting  the  Greek  army  to  pass  through 
her  territory.  A  memorandum  embodying  these 
points  was  submitted  to  the  Entente  by  the  Greek 
general  staff  on  April  20. 

The  Allies  refused  to  consider  this  offer,  re- 
28 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

garding  the  Greek  estimate  of  the  number  of 
troops  required  for  a  successful  attack  upon  Con- 
stantinople as  gi'eatly  exaggerated.  Six  months 
later  General  Sarrail  set  the  requisite  minimum 
for  an  offensive  against  Bulgaria  from  Saloniki 
at  virtually  the  same  figures.  The  British,  be- 
sides, believed  firmly  in  the  friendship  of  Bulgaria 
and  opposed  the  Greek  plan  as  calculated  to  pro- 
voke war  with  King  Ferdinand.  Every  insist- 
ence of  the  Greek  king  that  he  had  reason  to  be- 
lieve Bulgaria  had  been  planning  hostility  to  the 
Entente  from  the  date  of  the  floating  of  the  Bul- 
garian loan  in  Berlin  was  met  by  the  Allies  not 
only  with  unbelief,  but  in  a  spirit  of  irritation 
with  King  Constantine  for  mahgning  his  neigh- 
bor. 

As  for  the  guarantee  of  the  integrity  of  Greece 
during  the  war,  the  Entente  was  not  disposed  to 
furnish  any  other  than  the  acceptance  of  Greece 
as  an  ally ;  they  refused  to  undertake  any  engage- 
ment for  after  the  war.  They  ridiculed  Greece's 
uneasiness  as  to  the  attitude  of  Bulgaria  and 
proposed  that  the  Greek  army  be  sent  into  Asia 
JNIinor,  leaving  the  Macedonian  frontiers  of 
Greece  open  to  any  attack  the  Bulgars  might  de- 

89 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

sire  to  make.  Finally,  they  ^.vho  had  suggested 
compensations  in  Asia  Minor  to  Venizelos,  sud- 
denly found  it  unwise  to  plan  the  dismemberment 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire. 

To  the  Greeks  all  these  objections  appeared 
mere  chicane.  Nevertheless,  on  the  suggestion  of 
Jean  Guillemin,  afterward  French  minister  to 
Greece,  a  fortnight  later  the  Greeks  proposed  a 
new  combination,  withdrawing  their  condition 
of  a  guarantee  of  the  integrity  of  Greece  for  a 
period  after  the  war,  and  offering  their  ports  and 
islands  to  the  Entente  as  military  and  naval  bases 
and  their  fleet  to  cooperate  with  the  Allied  fleet 
against  Turkey.  The  Greek  army  was  to  remain 
inactive  as  long  as  there  was  danger  of  a  hostile 
move  by  Bulgaria.  The  Greeks  renounced  any 
idea  of  a  land  attack  on  Constantinople  in  view  of 
the  unwillingness  or  the  inability  of  the  Entente 
to  furnish  a  force  additional  to  the  Greek  army 
sufficient  to  give  the  enterprise  a  fighting  chance 
of  success. 

This  second  proposal,  although  made  at  the  in- 
stance of  France,  was  sharply  rejected.  Greece 
was  given  to  understand  that  she  must  join  the 
Allies  entirely  without  conditions  if  she  wished  to 

30 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

be  accepted  at  all.  The  Allied  landing  at  Gal- 
lipoli  was  counted  upon  to  demonstrate  the  seri- 
ous intentions  of  the  Entente.  Greece,  however, 
insisted  upon  the  point  of  the  guarantee  of  her  in- 
tegrity. But  the  Entente,  already  in  negotiations 
with  Italy  for  her  departure  from  neutrality, 
refused  to  discuss  the  integrity  of  Greece.  After 
the  Entente's  signature  of  the  secret  agreement 
with  Italy  on  April  25,  1915,  what  had  been  an 
impression  in  Athens  became  a  conviction; 
namely,  that  the  Entente  was  no  longer  able  to 
guarantee  the  integrity  of  Greece,  having  already 
promised  part  of  Greece  (Epirus)  to  Italy  and 
intending  to  offer  another  part  (Cavalla)  to  Bul- 
garia to  keep  her  from  joining  the  Central  em- 
pires. On  INIay  1,  the  Greek  Boule  was  dissolved. 
In  INIay,  also,  Italy  entered  the  war,  thereby 
clinching  any  arrangement  in  respect  to  Epirus 
that  may  have  been  secretly  made  between  her 
and  her  new  allies.  In  these  circumstances 
the  Greek  people  lost  all  enthusiasm  for  join- 
ing the  Entente.  They  conceived  a  very  pro- 
found feeling  that  the  Allied  powers  were  not 
playing  squarely.  This  sentiment  was  strength- 
ened by  the  action  of  the  English  in  stopping  and 

31 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

seizing  Greek  ships  or  holding  them  indefinitely 
at  Gibraltar,  INIalta,  or  Cyprus  on  filmy  or  no  ex- 
cuses, in  seizing  and  condemning  cargoes  of  wheat 
and  coal  necessary  to  the  economic  existence  of 
Greece,  in  stopping  or  delaying  telegrams  from 
or  to  Greece,  often  occasioning  heavy  losses  to 
Greek  business  men — all  on  the  ground  that  hos- 
tile submarines  were  being  supplied  from  Greece, 
an  assertion  the  Entente  authorities  were  never 
able  to  prove. 

To  these  repressions  and  irritations  was  added 
the  patent  unsuccess  of  the  Allied  land  operations 
at  the  Dardanelles  as  further  reason  for  Greece's 
waning  desire  to  join  the  Entente  powers. 
Jealous  of  concessions  promised  to  Italy  in  Asia 
Minor  at  the  same  moment  that  the  Greek  Gov- 
ernment was  being  informed  that  the  Entente 
could  not  see  their  way  clear  to  the  dismember- 
ment of  the  Ottoman  Empire;  suspicious  of  the 
sincerity  of  the  Entente  in  all  her  negotiations 
with  Greece;  persuaded  that  Great  Britain  was 
still  hoping  to  secure  the  aid  of  Bulgaria  at 
Greece's  expense;  convinced  by  the  facts  of  the 
Dardanelles  adventure  that  the  Entente  in  their 
operations  in  the  East  were  blundering,  through 

32 


GREECE  IN  THE  FIRST  HALF  OF  1915 

ignorance  of  conditions  and  incapacity  to  meet 
them  effectively,  the  Greeks  settled  down  without 
regret  to  the  idea  of  staying  out  of  the  war. 

In  June,  convinced  in  the  same  sense  as  his  sov- 
ereign of  the  insincerity  of  the  Entente  powers 
in  their  negotiations  with  the  Gounaris  cabinet, 
Foreign  INIinister  Christopher  Zographos  re- 
signed. With  his  resignation  any  hope  of  reach- 
ing an  agreement  with  the  Gounaris  government 
was  eliminated. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   SERBIAN    TREATY 

The  Greek  elections,  held  on  June  13,  1915, 
gave  Elephtherios  Venizelos  180  deputies  out  of 
31 6  in  the  Boule  of  the  Hellenes.  Despite  shame- 
less efforts  to  control  the  balloting  by  force,  the 
Conservative  government  of  Demetrios  Gounaris 
was  overwhelmingly  voted  out.  But  not  even 
Venizelos  himself  pretended  that  the  vote  in  ques- 
tion had  been  a  vote  by  Greece  in  favor  of  going 
to  war  on  the  side  of  the  Entente.  The  greater 
part  of  the  negotiations  between  Greece  and  the 
Entente  representatives  had  been  conducted,  as 
is  usual  in  the  near  East,  without  the  details  be- 
ing more  than  divined  by  the  people  at  large. 
Venizelos  had  taken  the  Greeks  into  his  confi- 
dence only  to  the  extent  of  publishing  his  two 
memoranda  to  his  sovereign,  an  action  regarded 
by  the  Greeks  generally  as  in  doubtful  taste.  In 
addition,  he  had  given  the  Entente  governments, 
and  to  a  certain  extent  the  Greek  people,  to 

34 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

understand  that  the  failure  of  his  negotiations  to 
join  Greece  with  the  Allies  had  been  due  to  the 
opposition  of  King  Constantine  and  the  general 
staff. 

At  this  period  the  Greeks  were  unquestion- 
ably passionately  in  favor  of  France  in  the 
European  War.  They  also  trusted  Venizelos 
and  respected  his  undoubted  abilities.  But  they 
were  by  no  means  disposed  to  part  with  a  portion 
of  the  territory  they  had  won  from  Bulgaria  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet,  even  at  the  behest  of 
Venizelos  or  to  help  France  in  her  war  with  Ger- 
many. Moreover,  the  voters,  almost  all  of  whom 
had  fought  victoriously  under  the  orders  of  the 
general  staff,  had  confidence  in  the  military  judg 
ment  of  their  officers,  and  they  considered  the 
participation  of  Greece  in  the  European  War  a 
military  matter  upon  which  General  Dousmanis, 
the  chief  of  staff,  might  be  better  qualified  to 
pronounce  than  even  Venizelos.  For  this  reason 
Venizelos's  censure  of  the  general  staff  left  the 
people  cold.  As  King  Constantine  put  it,  "They 
elected  Venizelos,  not  his  policj^" 

An   exceedingly   astute    politician,    Venizelos 
himself  was  as  well  aware  of  this  general  senti- 

35 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ment  as  anybody.  He  had,  therefore,  gone  very 
hghtly  on  the  war  part  of  his  program  during 
his  electoral  campaign,  purposing  to  achieve  his 
ends  by  more  devious  ways.  Scarcely  was  his 
majority  in  the  chamber  known  before  the  En- 
tente powers  acted  upon  it — in  Athens,  it  is  as- 
sumed, at  the  instance  of  Mr.  Venizelos.  A  note 
was  addressed  on  August  3  to  the  Greek  Gov- 
ernment by  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Russia, 
advising  Greece  that  the  Entente,  without  ask- 
ing the  permission  either  of  Serbia  or  Greece,  had 
entered  into  an  engagement  with  Bulgaria  to  de- 
liver to  her  the  Greek  port  of  Cavalla  and 
a  territory  lying  behind  the  port,  to  be  enlarged, 
according  to  the  verbal  statements  of  the  Entente 
ministers  in  Athens,  in  proportion  to  any  con- 
cessions which  might  be  made  later  to  Greece  in 
Asia  Minor.  At  the  same  time  the  Greek  Gov- 
ernment was  advised  that  a  similar  notice  had 
been  sent  Serbia,  the  ally  of  the  Entente,  ac- 
quainting the  Serbian  Government  with  the  En- 
tente's intended  cession  to  Bulgaria  of  all 
Serbian  Macedonia  not  in  dispute,  under  the 
Serbo-Bulgarian  treaty  of  1912.  This  proposed 
gi*ant  of  the  territory  of  an  ally  to  a  hostile 

36 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

neighbor  thrust  a  Bulgarian  wedge  between 
Serbia  and  Greece,  thus  effectually  nullifying  the 
Greco- Serbian  treaty  of  alliance,  which  had  been 
conceived  to  keep  the  two  countries  in  such  close 
contact  as  to  enable  them  to  oppose  a  solid  front 
to  their  common  enemy,  Bulgaria. 

To  say  that  this  cavaher  disposition  of 
the  territory  of  an  independent  state  pro- 
voked indignation  in  Greece  would  be  to  fail 
in  describing  the  feeling  the  Entente's  move 
aroused.  The  Greeks  felt  precisely  as  the  Amer- 
icans did  when  the  German  foreign  minister  pro- 
posed aiding  Mexico  to  reconquer  Texas,  New 
Mexico,  and  Arizona,  save  that  in  this  instance 
the  Entente  did  not  promise  to  aid  Bulgaria  to 
take  the  territory  in  question :  they  ceded  the  ter- 
ritory to  her  as  if  it  were  their  own.  Not  a  man 
in  Greece  was  ignorant  of  the  role  of  undeclared 
ally  that  Bulgaria  had  played  in  respect  to 
Turkey  since  the  latter's  entry  into  the  Euro- 
pean conflict.  Not  a  man  was  ignorant  that 
every  sacrifice  short  of  actual  armed  cooperation 
had  been  made  by  Greece  in  favor  of  Serbia  and 
her  greater  Allies  since  the  war  began,  and  that 
even  armed  cooperation  had  been  offered  and  re- 

37 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

jected.  No  one  was  unaware  of  the  heroic  fight 
that  Serbia  had  made,  nor  of  her  refusal  to  con- 
clude an  advantageous  separate  peace  with 
Austria  just  before  the  second  Austrian  invasion. 
Yet  the  two  countries  that  had  been  faithful  in 
sympathy  and  sacrifice  to  the  cause  of  the  En- 
tente, one  an  ally  and  the  other  an  independent 
neutral  state,  were  to  be  despoiled  in  favor  of 
the  one  Balkan  country  that  had  shown  herself 
consistently  hostile  to  the  Entente  in  deed  and  in 
intrigue  from  the  outset  of  the  war.  The  Greek 
Government  formally  protested. 

The  Serbian  Government,  in  no  position  to 
protest,  remained  silent.  Already  cooled  toward 
her  greater  allies  by  their  secret  treaty  of  April 
25  with  Italy,  Serbia  was  slowly  reaching  the 
conviction,  later  to  be  emphasized  by  disaster 
after  disaster  which  overtook  her,  that  the  En- 
tente powers  were  more  or  less  indifferent  to 
her  fate.  After  the  first  Austrian  invasion  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  war,  the  Serbian  general 
staff  begged  France  and  Great  Britain  to  send  a 
sufficient  quantity  of  heavy  artillery  to  Belgrade 
to  keep  the  Austrians  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Danube.     Three  tiny  naval  missions  were  .sent, 

38 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

the  British  under,  first,  Admiral  Troubridge  and 
then  Admiral  Cardale,  the  French  under  Com- 
mander Picot,  and  the  Russian  under  Lieutenant 
Volkovinsky.  But  unsupplied  with  either  guns 
or  sufficient  ammunition,  despite  frantic  appeals 
to  JNIalta  for  the  needed  supplies,  these  inade- 
quate missions  were  able  to  be  of  little  use. 
When  the  third  invasion  of  Serbia  began,  they 
gave  it  up  entirely  as  a  bad  job. 

The  common  Greco- Serbian  frontier  erected 
by  Greece  and  Serbia  at  the  conference  of  Buk- 
harest  was  as  necessary  to  Serbia  as  to  Greece. 
Her  only  communication  with  the  sea  was 
through  the  Greek  port  of  Saloniki.  An  exten- 
sion of  the  Bulgarian  frontiers  toward  the  Var- 
dar  threatened  to  cut  Serbia  off  from  every  possi- 
bility of  developing  and  consolidating  her  newly 
won  territory. 

Venizelos  naturally  did  not  openly  support  the 
Entente's  demands;  but  no  more  did  he  oppose 
them.  Following  the  elections,  Prime  Minister 
Gounaris  resigned,  and  King  Constantine  sum- 
moned Venizelos  to  the  premiership.  The  Boule 
was  first  called  for  July  20,  and  then  postponed 
until  August  16,  at  the  premier's  desire.     On  as- 

39 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

suming  power,  Venizelos  declared  the  situation  no 
longer  the  same  as  during  the  previous  January, 
when  he  had  urged  the  juncture  of  Greece  with 
the  Entente  powers,  and,  on  the  assembly  of  the 
Boule,  he  formally  repeated  his  renunciation  of 
his  previous  policy  of  alineing  Greece  with  the 
Allied  powers  upon  any  conditions  and  at  any 
cost.  To  appreciate  the  events  which  followed 
it  is  important  to  note  this  change  of  front  on  the 
part  of  the  Cretan.  For  later,  when  King  Con- 
stantine  removed  him  from  power  for  trying  to 
compass  Greece's  departure  from  neutrality 
without  a  mandate  from  the  Greek  people  to  that 
effect,  he  declared  his  sovereign's  act  unconsti- 
tutional on  the  ground  that  the  Greek  people  had 
pronounced  upon  a  question  of  cooperation  with 
the  Entente  in  the  elections  of  June  13.  And  his 
whole  claim  to  any  standing  in  Greece  to-day 
rests  on  the  assumption  that  he  alone  represents 
the  will  of  the  Greek  people  constitutionally  ex- 
pressed at  that  time. 

It  is  important,  too,  to  note  that  at  this  mo- 
ment there  was  no  voice  raised  in  Greece — least 
of  all  that  of  Mr.  Venizelos — to  maintain  that 
the   Greco- Serbian  treaty  of  alliance   required 

40 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

Greece  to  come  to  the  armed  aid  of  Serbia  in  a 
general  European  war.  On  the  contrary,  by  of- 
fering additional  inducements  to  Greece  to  join 
the  Serbs  at  the  time  of  the  second  Austrian  in- 
vasion, the  Entente  powers  had  virtually  ad- 
mitted that  the  Greco- Serbian  treaty  did  not 
suffice  to  compel  Greece  to  enter;  besides,  by 
promising  to  Bulgaria  Serbian  territory  spe- 
cifically mentioned  in  the  treaty  as  essential  to 
the  maintenance  of  effective  military  contact  be- 
tween the  two  contracting  countries,  the  Entente 
powers  had  not  only  ignored  the  treaty  in  ques- 
tion, but  had  undertaken  to  treat  it  as  a  scrap 
of  paper  of  no  importance  or  applicability  to  the 
existing  situation. 

Between  Serbia  and  Greece  a  long  series  of 
conversations  as  to  the  best  method  of  applying 
the  militaiy  provisions  of  the  treaty,  should  it 
ever  become  operative,  proved  abortive.  The 
document  itself  is  in  two  j^arts,  a  treaty  of  de- 
fensive alliance  against  an  attack  upon  either  of 
the  contracting  parties  by  Bulgaria,  and  a  mili- 
tary convention  defining  with  meticulous  ac- 
curacy the  precise  obligations  of  both  parties  in 
that  event.     On  August  17,  1914,  just  before 

41 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Turkey's  entry  into  the  war,  the  Greek  staff, 
under  Mr.  Venizelos's  premiership,  advised  Serbia 
that  if  Turkey  were  to  attack  Greece  alone, 
Greece  would  support  the  attack  alone;  but  that 
if,  as  seemed  likely,  Bulgaria  were  to  declare  war 
at  the  same  time,  Serbia  must  oppose  Bulgaria 
with  at  least  100,000  bayonets  (actual  combat- 
ants) in  order  to  prevent  a  Bulgarian  concentra- 
tion against  Greece.  The  requirements  of  the 
military  convention  are  explicit: 

At  the  opening  of  hostilities  at  whatever  moment  they 
may  begin,  Serbia  contracts  to  put  150,000  men  in  the 
Ghevgheli-Koumanovo  and  Pirot  sectors.^ 

To  this  voluntary  reduction  of  the  number  of 
troops  Greece  could  expect  of  Serbia,  the  Serbian 
staff  replied  that  Serbia  could  not  take  her  forces 
from  the  Austrian  frontier  to  send  them  to  the 
Bulgarian  border  because  of  certain  obligations 
she  had  contracted  toward  the  Entente.  Again, 
on  April  3,  1915,  the  Greek  staff  sent  Colonel 
Vlakhopoulos  to  Kraguyevatz  to  enter  into  a  con- 
ference with  the  Serbian  staff  with  a  view  to 
ascertaining  just  what  the  Serbs  could  do  in  the 
way  of  fulfilment  of  their  side  of  the  contract. 
The  Voivode  Putnik  refused  flatly  to  enter  into 

i"Le  Temps,"  Paris,  August  15,  1915;    No.  20,128. 

42 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

any  conversations  on  this  head.  On  August  10 
the  Serbian  staff  informed  Colonel  Vlakhopoulos 
that,  far  from  being  able  to  transport  the  treaty 
requirement  of  150,000  bayonets  to  the  Bul- 
garian frontier  in  the  event  of  the  then  impending 
declaration  of  war  by  Bulgaria,  the  most  that 
Greece  could  count  upon  in  the  future  was  two 
Serbian  divisions,  or  fewer  than  20,000  men. 

Evidently  this  situation  was  not  the  fault  of 
Serbia;  neither  was  it  the  fault  of  Greece.  The 
plans  had  been  made  by  both  staffs  in  full  knowl- 
edge of  the  military  needs  of  a  campaign  against 
Bulgaria.  It  was  not  a  sentimental  problem,  or 
even  a  political  one ;  it  was  a  military  emergency 
that  arose  by  mid-August,  1915,  when  both 
Greece  and  Serbia  became  convinced  of  Bul- 
garia's hostile  intentions.  Serbia  at  once  ap- 
proached her  greater  allies  to  supply  the  missing 
contingent  of  100,000  bayonets,  with  which  the 
Greek  staff  thought  that  a  campaign  might  be 
undertaken.  The  Entente  governments  treated 
the  idea  of  a  Bulgarian  attack  with  contempt,  and 
refused  to  treat  Serbia's  plea  seriously.  The 
French  minister  to  Serbia,  M.  Bopp,  had 
preached  the  ultimate  hostile  action  of  Bulgaria 

43 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  M.  Delcasse  for  months.  His  only  satisfac- 
tion was  to  be  told  that  he  was  a  Serbophile. 
The  French  minister  in  Sofia,  M.  Panafieu,  tele- 
graphed his  Government  daily  for  a  fortnight 
before  Bulgaria's  declaration  of  war  that  Bul- 
garia's hostility  was  inevitable.  He  received  no 
reply  from  the  Quai  d'Orsay  at  all. 

On  September  15  the  Greek  staff  advised  the 
Serbian  staff,  as  well  as  the  Entente  ministers  in 
Athens,  that  it  was  in  the  possession  of  informa- 
tion that  sixteen  Austrian  and  German  divisions 
had  passed  through  Budapest  bound  southward. 
They  also  told  the  Entente  that  October  14  was 
the  date  set  for  Bulgaria's  declaration  of  war. 
The  information  was  too  precise  to  be  wholly 
ignored.  For  the  first  time  the  scorn  the  En- 
tente had  previously  exhibited  for  the  idea  of 
a  combined  Austro-German-Bulgarian  invasion 
of  Serbia  from  two  sides  appeared  to  be  shaken, 
albeit  Great  Britain  clung  to  her  assertion  that 
Bulgaria  would  never  move  from  neutrality. 
New  pressure,  however,  was  brought  from  Lon- 
don and  Paris  to  bear  upon  Greece,  and  on  Sep- 
tember 21  Venizelos  promised  the  French  and 
British  ministers   that   Greece  would  mobihze. 

44 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

At  the  same  time,  on  his  own  responsibility  and 
without  authorization  from  the  sovereign  of 
Greece  or  the  Boule  of  the  Hellenes,  he  asked 
France  and  Great  Britain  to  send  150,000  Allied 
troops  to  INIacedonia.  The  two  governments  re- 
plied that  they  were  favorably  disposed  to  con- 
sider the  matter. 

On  September  23  the  Bulgarian  mobilization 
was  decreed,  but  officially  stated  to  be  "solely 
for  defensive  purposes."  Four  days  later  Sir 
Edward  Grey  formally  declared  in  the  House  of 
Commons:  "According  to  official  information 
reaching  us,  Bulgaria  has  decided  to  assume  here- 
after an  attitude  of  armed  neutrality  to  defend 
her  rights  and  independence.  Nevertheless  she 
has  no  aggressive  intentions  against  any  of  the 
neighbors  of  Bulgaria." 

On  September  24,  King  Constantine  signed  a 
decree  mobilizing  the  Greek  army.  He  ordered 
it  to  take  up  the  positions  on  the  Bulgarian  fron- 
tier indicated  in  the  Greco-Serbian  treaty  of 
alliance,  that  it  might  be  ready  to  act  in  case  the 
situation  altered  in  Serbia  or  in  case  France  and 
Great  Britain,  at  last  alive  to  a  possible  Bul- 
garian attack  the  imminence  of  which  the  Greek 

45 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

king  and  the  Serbian  staff  had  long  urged  upon 
them,  should  decide  to  send  a  force  to  the  aid  of 
their  hard-pressed  ally. 

In  decreeing  the  mobilization,  however.  King 
Constantine  took  the  precaution  to  state  that  it 
was  "for  the  defense  of  the  national  territory 
only,"  so  as  to  prevent  his  prime  minister  from 
rushing  Greece  into  war  without  sufficient  con- 
sideration of  its  consequences  to  Greece  and  to 
Hellenism  in  general.  Later,  he  embodied  his 
idea  in  a  declaration  which  he  gave  me  for  j^ubli- 
cation : 

Greece  is  merely  loosening  her  sword  in  the  scabbard. 
She  menaces  no  one.  But  she  cannot  permit  thai 
events  shall  constitute  a  menace  to  the  integrity  of  the 
nation  or  to  the  freedom  of  the  Greek  people.  It  is 
my  duty  to  preserve  my  country  from  the  danger  of 
destruction  through  becoming  involved  in  the  general 
European  conflict.  I  shall  do  this  at  all  hazards,  if  i\ 
be  possible. 

At  the  request  of  the  Central  empires,  thc^ 
Greek  Government  at  this  juncture  transmitted 
to  Serbia  a  second  offer  of  a  separate  peace. 
The  Serbs  wavered.  Convinced  of  Bulgaria's  in- 
tentions and  in  despair  at  the  indifference  of  the 
Entente  to  their  peril,  they  asked  permission  of 

46 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

their  Allies  to  fall  upon  Bulgaria  before  the  lat- 
ter's  mobilization  could  be  completed.  Great 
Britain  refused  to  permit  this.  Faced  with  the 
certainty  of  an  attack  from  two  sides,  knowing 
herself  in  no  position  to  concentrate  on  the  Bul- 
garian frontier  the  troops  required  to  render  the 
Greco- Serbian  treaty  operative  and  thus  assure 
the  assistance  of  the  Greek  army,  a  large  party 
in  Serbia  openly  advocated  the  acceptance  of  the 
proposal  for  a  separate  peace. 

Serbia's  danger  had  failed  to  arouse  the  En- 
tente to  any  action  in  her  behalf.  The  prospect 
of  Serbia's  defection,  however,  produced  an  im- 
mediate result  in  London  and  Paris.  The  Serbs 
were  promised  aid,  and  in  consequence  they  re- 
fused the  offer  of  a  separate  peace.  General 
Sarrail's  expeditionarj^  force,  which  had  been 
designated  for  operations  in  Syria  on  September 
3,  was  suddenly  ordered  to  proceed  to  Saloniki 
instead  on  a  day's  notice.  It  was,  however,  as 
Sir  Edward  Grey  frankly  characterized  it,  "a 
comparatively  small  force." 

The  preliminaries  to  this  landing  were  charac- 
teristic of  the  methods  of  the  Cretan  statesman. 
Rumania  was  first  asked  to  cooperate  against 

47 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Bulgaria,  and  refused.  Then,  on  October  2, 
after  having  completed  all  his  arrangements  with 
the  Entente  ministers  in  Athens  for  the  sending 
of  a  nominal  expeditionary  force  to  Macedonia, 
Venizelos  broached  the  matter  to  his  sovereign. 
"If  the  Entente  will  supply  the  150,000  bayonets 
required  by  the  Greco- Serbian  treaty  to  call  the 
Greek  army  into  operation,  will  King  Constan- 
tine,  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  Greek  army, 
undertake  to  lead  the  army  in  a  campaign  against 
Bulgaria?"  was  his  fashion  of  putting  the  ques- 
tion. The  king  demurred  that  he  could  not  de- 
cide unless  he  knew  what  quality  of  troops  the 
Entente  proposed  to  send.  Venizelos  promised 
that  they  should  be  "metropolitan,"  or  line, 
troops,  not  colonials.  The  king  objected  that 
so  important  a  military  matter  should  be  thor- 
oughly threshed  out  with  the  general  staff  before 
reaching  any  definite  decision.  His  prime 
minister  replied  that  time  pressed,  and  urged 
immediate  action.  King  Constantine  main- 
tained, as  he  has  always  maintained,  that  the 
Greco- Serbian  treaty  was  not  in  question, 
as  it  was  conceived  solely  in  reference  to 
purely  Balkan  combinations  and  could  not  be 

48 


CONSTANTIXE  I 
King  of  the  Hellenes 


THE  SERBIAN  TREATY 

operative  in  the  case  of  a  general  European  war^ 
However,  disposed  in  every  practical  way  to  be 
of  aid  to  the  Serbs,  he  declared  his  willingness  to 
consider  any  combination  based  upon  the  essen- 
tial military  requirements  of  such  a  campaign  as 
laid  down  in  the  Greco-Serbian  treaty.  It  was 
not  the  form  that  interested  him,  but  the  material 
result. 

On  this  assurance,  and  on  the  definite  under- 
standing that  the  Entente  force  to  be  sent  was  to 
total  150,000  men,  or  at  least  100,000  bayonets, 
Venizelos  left  the  king's  presence  at  Tatoy  and 
went  at  once  to  the  French  and  British  lega- 
tions. 

"The  king  consents,"  he  informed  the  two  di- 
plomatists.    "Let  the  troops  come!" 

Later  in  the  evening  King  Constantine  tele- 
phoned his  prime  minister  to  repair  to  Tatoy  the 
following  morning  to  discuss  the  details  of  the 
proposed  arrangement  with  the  officers  of  the 
Greek  staff. 

"It  is  too  late.  Sire,"  answered  Venizelos. 
"The  French  are  already  on  the  way." 

Article  XCIX  of  the  Greek  Constitution 
reads : 

61 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

"No  foreign  army  can  be  admitted  to  the 
Greek  service  without  a  special  law,  nor  can  it 
sojourn  or  pass  through  the  state." 


62 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   SALONIKI   AD\TENTURE 

The  Allied  expeditionary  force,  ordered  to 
Saloniki  on  October  2,  1915,  began  debarkment 
October  5.  The  whirlwind  Austro-German  at- 
tack upon  Serbia  under  General  von  JNIackensen 
began  October  6.  The  whole  story  is  a  heroic 
eddy  at  one  side  of  the  great,  boiling  caldron 
of  the  European  War.  The  Serbs  fought  des- 
perately, but  they  had  no  chance  from  the  very 
outset.  The  French  advance  into  Serbia,  begun 
October  14,  and  the  retreat  upon  Saloniki  ending 
just  two  months  later,  was  an  operation  in  the 
nature  of  the  "Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade" — 
magnificent,  but  not  war.  It  is  impossible  to 
praise  too  highly  the  gallant  conduct  of  the  Frencft 
troops  under  incredibly  difficult  conditions.  The 
position  of  General  de  Lardemelle's  force,  es- 
pecially, occupying  the  extreme  left  beyond  the 
Tscherna  ^  River  in  an  effort  to  effect  a  juncture 

1  Also  spelled  improperly  Cerna. 

53 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

with  the  Serbs  at  the  northern  end  of  Babounas 
Pass,  was  never  seriously  tenable  for  a  moment. 
Yet  he  held  it  for  ten  days,  waiting,  as  the  entire 
expeditionary  force  was  waiting,  for  the  rein- 
forcements that  were  sent  to  Saloniki  only  in  De- 
cember, after  it  was  too  late — and  then  in  too 
small  a  number  to  be  of  any  use. 

If  the  expedition  was  political  (and  only  the 
chancelleries  of  London  and  Paris  know  what 
they  had  in  mind  in  ordering  the  expedition) ,  cal- 
culated to  induce  the  Greeks  to  enter  the  war,  it 
was  both  childish  and  dishonest;  dishonest  be- 
cause it  assumed  that  the  Greeks  would  be  led  by 
sentiment  to  throw  themselves  into  the  war  at  the 
first  appearance  of  Allied  troops  on  Greek  soil, 
and  that,  once  precipitated  thus  into  the  hostili- 
ties, they  would  be  compelled  to  fight  it  through 
even  to  the  destruction  of  Greece,  without  further 
help  from  the  Entente  powers.  The  proof  that 
France  and  Great  Britain  would  have  sent  no 
adequate  reinforcements  to  the  Greeks,  had  the 
latter  embarked  upon  the  hazardous  adventure  as 
the  Allies  hoped,  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  sent 
no  adequate  reinforcements  to  their  own  troops, 
who  were  caught  like  rats  in  a  trap.     The  enter- 

54i 


THE  SALONIKI  ADVENTURE 

prise,  if  undertaken  with  the  hope  of  persuading 
the  Greeks  to  go  to  war,  was  childish  because  it 
assumed  that  the  Greek  staff  would  not  know  an 
expeditionary  force  of  serious  proportions  from  a 
handful  of  armed  men — the  Greeks  who,  in  the 
present  generation  and  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  European  War,  had  seen  more  real  war  than 
France  and  Great  Britain  combined. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  conceive  of  the  adven- 
ture as  having  been  seriously  undertaken  as  a  mil- 
itary emprise.  If  so,  however,  it  is  perhaps  the 
greatest  single  folly  of  the  war,  not  excluding  the 
Dardanelles  affair.  For  the  Saloniki  adventure 
involved  the  possibility  of  a  far  worse  disaster  to 
the  Allied  arms  than  that  of  GallipoH.  General 
Sarrail's  troops  were  saved  from  destruction 
when  they  retired  upon  Saloniki  only  by  the 
purely  fortuitous  circumstance  of  the  presence  of 
friendly  Greek  troops  on  both  his  flanks — a  cir- 
cumstance upon  which,  as  the  capable  soldier  he 
is,  he  could  not  properly  count.  Had  the  Greeks 
retired  before  the  Bulgarian  advance  in  Decem- 
ber, 1915,  as  they  did  in  May,  1916,  no  power  on 
earth  could  have  saved  General  Sarrail  from  de- 
feat; had  the  Greek  staff  and  the  Greek  king 

55 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

actually  favored  the  Germans,  as  both  Mr. 
Venizelos  and  the  Entente  press  insist  with  such 
vehemence  is  the  case,  a  combined  Greco-Bul- 
garian attack  upon  Sarrail's  retreating  armj^' 
would  have  meant  its  capture  or  its  complete 
annihilation.  It  was  these  mad  risks  that  the 
expedition  ran. 

There  were  greater  mihtary  and  moral  issues 
involved  in  the  adventure  than  the  fate  of  an 
Allied  army  of  less  than  60,000  men.  The  whole 
prestige  of  the  Entente  in  the  Balkans  was  at 
stake.  Serbia  had  been  promised  help.  She  did 
not  get  it.  Serbia  and  jNIontenegro  were  crushed, 
because  the  promised  help  was  not  brought  in 
time,  or,  indeed,  ever.  It  is  of  no  avail  in  the 
Balkans,  and  I  doubt  if  it  is  of  much  avail  any- 
where else — save  perhaps  in  the  Entente  coun- 
tries themselves — to  seek  to  blame  the  issue  on 
the  Greeks.  This  is  not  the  war  of  the  Greeks; 
it  is  the  war  of  the  Entente,  and  the  Entente 
powers  had  no  business  to  stake  the  very  life  of 
two  of  their  allies  on  a  mere  gamble.  More- 
over, it  was  not  even  a  gamble  when  regarded 
from  a  cold-blooded  military  point  of  view.  The 
Entente  powers  would  themselves  have  been  the 

56 


THE  SALOXIKI  ADVENTURE 

first  to  despise  and  criticize  the  Greeks  had  they 
entered  the  war  under  heavy  handicap  and  in 
consequence  been  destroyed  by  the  armies  of  the 
Central  empires,  precisely  as  to-day  they  despise 
and  criticize  Rumania  for  the  same  reason. 

The  Entente  were  perfectly  aware  of  the  po- 
sition of  the  Greek  staff  in  regard  to  entering 
hostilities  without  forces  and  equipment  adequate 
to  victory.  This  position  had  been  made  clear 
in  November,  1914,  and  in  January,  March, 
and  April,  1915,  during  previous  negotiations 
between  the  Entente  and  Greece,  for  the  latter's 
jDarticipation  in  the  war.  Colonel  Sir  Thomas 
Cumiingham,  the  British  military  attache  in 
Athens,  was  in  closest  touch  with  the  Greek  staff 
and  had  advised  his  government  fully  as  to  its 
disposition  to  remain  unmoved  by  considerations 
of  sentiment  or  politics  and  to  govern  the  conduct 
of  the  Greek  army  by  rule  of  sheer  military  prob- 
abilities. The  haphazard  manner  of  planning 
and  pursuing  the  Dardanelles  adventure  merely 
strengthened  the  Greek  staff  in  its  conviction 
that  the  Entente  were  both  badly  informed  in 
respect  to  conditions  in  the  near  East  and  in- 
chned  to  take  the  military  problems  of  the  Bal- 

57 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

kans  far  too  lightly.  Before  this  concrete 
example  of  incapacity  had  been  thrust  under 
their  noses,  it  is  possible  King  Constantine  and 
the  Greek  staff  might  have  inclined  to  credit  Ven- 
izelos's  claim  that  the  Entente  were  prepared 
to  send  150,000  metropoHtan  troops  to  Saloniki; 
after  the  Gallipoli  failure  became  evident,  how- 
ever, they  preferred  to  count  the  French  and 
English  troops  as  they  arrived,  and  to  move 
only  when  a  reasonable  number  of  properly 
trained  men  were  on  the  ground.  On  this  basis, 
the  forces  furnished  by  the  Entente  gave  them 
no  occasion  to  move  at  all. 

Finally,  the  Entente  knew  better  than  any  one 
that  their  hopes  of  Greek  aid  were  founded  on 
a  politician,  not  a  soldier ;  yet  they  required  mili- 
tary, not  political  aid.  They  knew  Venizelos  to 
be  their  man;  his  political  fortunes  in  Greece 
were  bound  up  with  their  policy,  which  he  had 
made  his.  It  was  evident,  therefore,  that  for  the 
Entente  to  reach  an  understanding  with  Veni- 
zelos for  the  aid  of  Greece  was  about  as  effective 
to  the  end  of  securing  for  the  Allied  powers  the 
cooperation  of  King  Constantine's  army,  as  for 
the  Entente  to  reach  an  understanding  with  Sir 

58 


THE  SALONIKI  ADVENTURE 

Edward  Grey  for  the  aid  of  Greece.  Venizelos 
no  more  controlled  the  Greek  army  than  did  the 
British  foreign  minister.  The  negotiations  of 
the  Entente  with  Greece  for  her  participation  in 
the  war  at  this  juncture  were  in  no  sense  a 
frank  discussion  on  a  military  basis  between  two 
parties  who  expect  thereafter  to  work  together  in 
the  close  association  of  alliance ;  they  were  simply 
a  diplomatic  and  political  intrigue,  powerless, 
even  if  successful,  to  obtain  any  real  advantage 
either  for  Serbia  or  for  the  Entente. 

The  loss  to  the  Entente  in  the  failure  of  the 
effort  to  rescue  Serbia  is  not  measurable  in  pres- 
tige alone.  It  was  a  loss  of  men  far  in  excess 
of  the  comparatively  small  casualties  suffered  by 
General  Sarrail's  army,  for  it  meant  the  virtual 
annihilation  of  the  Serbian  and  Montenegrin 
armies.  Serbia  had  begun  the  war  with  some 
300,000  trained  and  experienced  soldiers  whose 
hardihood  and  staying  powers  were  second  to 
those  of  no  soldiers  engaged  in  the  entire  Euro- 
pean conflict.  To-day  75,000  is  a  generous 
estimate  of  the  Serbian  army.  Montenegro  be- 
gan the  war  with  twelve  brigades  of  infantry 
and  a  brigade  of  artillery,  a  very  considerable 

59 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

force  for  so  small  a  country.     To-day  no  Monte- 
negrin army  remains. 

In  Athens,  the  news  of  an  Allied  expedition 
to  Saloniki  precipitated  an  acute  pohtical  crisis. 
Venizelos  played  his  last  card  as  premier.  On 
October  5  he  appeared  in  the  Boule  with  the  pur- 
pose of  using  his  majority  to  jam  through  the 
resolution  constitutionally  required  to  legalize  the 
landing  of  a  foreign  force  on  Greek  soil;  for  at 
that  moment,  having  as  prime  minister  of  Greece 
invited  a  foreign  army  to  debark  in  Greece  with- 
out the  permission  of  the  deputies,  he  had  violated 
the  Constitution  and  stood  entirely  without  the 
law.  He  had  acted  as  a  dictator  and  he  felt  the 
need  to  regularize  his  position  at  once.  But  the 
representatives  of  the  Greek  people  did  not  prove 
as  tractable  as  he  had  anticipated.  The  powers' 
note  of  August  3,  giving  Cavalla  to  Bulgaria, 
had  had  its  effect,  and  there  was  a  marked  oppo- 
sition for  the  first  time  to  Greece's  leaving  neu- 
trality on  any  terms.  The  session  of  the  Boule 
lasted  until  five  o'clock  in  the  morning.  In  the 
course  of  the  debate  Venizelos  was  forced  to  make 
admissions  that  put  him  in  the  light  of  having 
completely  altered  his  ground  since  his  election; 

60 


THE  SALONIKI  ADVENTURE 

on  the  subject  of  the  Greco-Serbian  treaty  he  had 
to  renounce  the  position  he  had  taken  in  October 
and  November,  1914,  that  the  alhance  did  not 
require  Greece  to  participate  in  a  general  Euro- 
pean struggle.  He  was  compelled  to  go  back  on 
his  earlier  statement  that  conditions  had  altered 
since  January,  1915,  and  that  the  recent  elections 
had  not  recorded  the  decision  of  the  people  in 
favor  of  war,  and  to  take  the  contradictory  stand 
that  the  vote  in  the  elections  of  June  13  had 
been  a  vote  for  war — a  stand  which  nothing  in 
fact  justified.  In  fine,  he  was  shown  by  his  own 
admissions  to  have  been  intriguing  with  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Entente  powers  while  the 
sovereign  and  the  people  of  Greece  had  been 
kept  in  ignorance  of  what  he  was  about.  As  a 
crowning  revelation  of  his  policy,  he  asserted 
from  the  tribune  of  the  chamber  that  he  believed 
Greece  must  join  the  Entente,  not  onlj^  to  fight 
Bulgaria  or  Turkey  if  necessary,  but  to  fight 
Austria  and  Germany  as  well,  should  occasion 
require.  He  pronounced  this  course  imperative 
because  of  Greece's  obligation  to  Serbia  created 
by  the  treaty  of  May  19,  1913— an  obligation 
which  he  now  declared  binding  whether  the  En- 

61 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

tente  sent  a  sufficient  force  to  be  of  real  value  in 
the  Macedonian  operations  or  not,  and  binding 
even  to  the  destruction  of  Greece. 

With  the  majority  of  his  most  devoted  fol- 
lowers behind  him,  Venizelos  weathered  the  storm 
in  the  chamber,  but  only  in  the  face  of  bitter  op- 
position which  scarcely  augured  such  unity  of 
enthusiastic  purpose  as  would  be  required  if  war 
were  to  be  waged.  The  extreme  interpretation 
which  he  put  upon  the  Serbian  treaty  was  a  new 
one,  upon  which  the  Greek  people  certainly  had 
never  been  called  to  pass.  If  their  sentiment  in 
respect  to  war  with  Bulgaria  was  clear,  certainly 
they  had  never  pronounced  upon  war  against 
Austria  and  Germany.  Indeed,  since  the  En- 
tente's note  of  August  3,  there  had  been  reason 
to  beheve  that  the  people  of  Greece  would  have 
liked  to  pronounce  much  more  definitely  than 
hitherto  they  had  had  opportunity  of  doing  upon 
the  entire  foreign  policy  of  the  country. 

On  the  following  day,  therefore,  October  5, 
King  Constantine  called  his  first  minister  to  the 
palace.  The  interview  was  a  stormy  one.  The 
monarch  felt  that  the  prime  minister's  course  had 
been  one  of  intrigue  at  the  expense  both  of  the 

62 


THE  SALONIKI  ADVENTURE 

Greek  people  and  of  his  own  position  as  head  of 
the  army.  Excessively  frank  himself,  the  Greek 
sovereign  despises  the  devious  ways  of  politicians. 
He  voiced  his  feeling  on  this  occasion,  and  his 
hand  is  not  light  in  dealing  with  what  he  can- 
not approve.  He  asked  the  Cretan  if  the  reports 
of  his  declarations  in  the  previous  evening's 
debate  were  correct.  Venizelos  reviewed  for  the 
benefit  of  his  sovereign  the  position  he  had  taken 
in  the  Boule. 

"I  can  no  longer  cooperate  with  you  along 
those  lines,"  the  king  said  dryly,  when  his  min- 
ister had  finished.  "I  shall  accept  your  resigna- 
tion. The  people  of  Greece  will  decide  whether 
you  are  authorized  to  plunge  them  into  war  or 
not." 

Venizelos  saw  the  place  in  the  sun  he  had 
worked  and  schemed  for  since  the  beginning  of 
the  European  War  suddenly  obscured.  He 
claimed  that,  as  he  had  been  reelected  in  June 
after  his  resignation  in  March,  the  throne  had 
not  the  constitutional  right  to  send  him  back  to 
the  people  for  a  second  vote,  whatever  may  have 
been  the  alteration  of  the  external  as  well  as  the 
internal  situation  of  Greece  in  the  interim.     He 

63 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

has  maintained  that  position  ever  since,  making 
the  foundation  of  his  revolutionary  movement 
against  the  present  King  of  the  Hellenes  the 
claim  that  the  Greek  sovereign  violated  the  Con- 
stitution under  which,  according  to  the  Cretan, 
Constantine  I  is  merely  the  "highest  functionary" 
of  a  democratic  state.  Article  XXXI  of  the 
Greek  Constitution  reads,  however:  "The  king 
appoints  and  dismisses  his  ministers."  There  is 
no  qualifying  clause  whatever. 

In  this  connection  a  statement  which  Venizelos 
gave  me  for  publication  the  morning  of  October 
4  is  interesting,  albeit  somewhat  confusing  when 
compared  with  the  facts.  He  received  his  sum- 
mons to  repair  to  the  palace  while  I  talked  with 
him;  at  that  time,  so  far  as  he  knew,  the  bold 
stroke  he  had  attempted  in  inviting  the  French 
and  British  to  land  troops  in  Macedonia  was  in  a 
way  to  succeed.  The  significant  detail,  however, 
is  that  I  submitted  the  statement  to  him  for  his 
approval  after  he  had  left  the  king,  when  he 
knew  that  his  interpretation  of  the  Greco- Serbian 
treaty  had  not  met  the  views  of  the  Greek  sov- 
ereign, and  that  the  matter  would,  in  consequence, 
be  referred  to  the  people  of  Greece  for  their 

64 


THE  SALONIKI  ADVENTURE 

judgment.  He  knew,  too,  that  he  was  then  no 
longer  premier,  and  that  whatever  declaration  he 
might  give  out  could  only  serve  to  embarrass  the 
incoming  premier  and,  in  the  eyes  of  the  public 
abroad,  bind  the  new  government  to  a  policy 
which  was  yet  to  be  pronounced  upon  by  the 
people.  Yet,  far  from  altering  the  statement  in 
these  circumstances,  he  countersigned  it  him- 
self, so  that  it  might  pass  the  censor.  He  said  in 
part: 

One  thing  is  absolutely  certain:  Greece  will  abide 
by  the  terms  of  her  alliance  with  Serbia  not  only  in  the 
letter  but  in  the  spirit,  to  the  last  man  and  the  last 
drachma.  More,  the  Greco-Serbian  treaty  foresaw 
only  the  possibility  of  a  Balkan  war.  When  it  was 
made  no  one  could  predict  the  present  European  con- 
flict with  all  its  widespread  complications.  But  the 
spirit  of  the  alliance  was  one  of  mutual  defense,  and  be- 
cause the  dangers  threatening  our  ally  have  increased 
with  unforeseen  conditions,  there  is  no  excuse  for  hiding 
behind  the  verbiage  of  the  treaty  to  escape  the  respon- 
sibilities of  our  pledge. 

Though  the  entire  available  forces  of  the  Central 
Empires  be  added  to  those  of  the  Bulgarians  in  an 
attempt  to  crush  Serbia,  Greece  will  unflinchingly  re- 
main true  to  her  passed  word.   .  .  . 

Nor  has  there  ever  been  at  bottom  the  slightest 
wavering  among  the  Greek  people  respecting  the  terms 
of  the  alliance,  although  every  desperate  effort  has  been 
made  to  becloud  the  issue.   .   .  . 

Respecting   the    landing   of    the   French    troops    at 

65 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

SalonikI,  there  is  but  one  thing  to  be  said:  we  have 
protested,  of  course,  for  we  wished  to  remain  neutral 
in  the  European  struggle,  and  we  wish  it  now,  if  it  were 
consistent  with  our  rights  and  duties.  But  the  Greek 
people  cannot  declare  war  on  France,  and  would  not 
if  they  could. 

What  France  has  done  for  Greece  no  Greek  can 
forget.  There  coraes  now  France  asking  nothing  of 
Greece,  declaring  categorically  her  sole  intention  to  be 
to  support  Greece's  ally  in  the  case  of  a  need  wherein 
Greece  herself  would  be  bound  to  support  her  neighbor. 
It  is  something  offered,  not  something  asked.  Indeed, 
since  I  have  been  premier  I  may  say  quite  frankly  that 
the  Entente  have  not  asked  one  concession  of  Greece. 

The  last  assertion  is  astonishing  in  view  of  the 
Entente's  long  negotiations  with  Greece,  con- 
ducted through  Venizelos  as  prime  minister,  for 
the  cession  of  Cavalla  to  Bulgaria — negotiations 
frankly  admitted  by  the  British  Government  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  There  appears  to  be  a 
certain  inconsistency  also  between  the  insistence 
upon  Greece's  "passed  word"  and  the  admission 
that  "the  Greco-Serbian  treaty  foresaw  only  the 
possibility  of  a  Balkan  war" — precisely  King 
Constantine's  own  interpretation  of  that  docu- 
ment. 

Moreover,  what  the  Cretan  statesman  says 
about  wishing  to  remain  neutral  "even  now"  is 
extraordinary  in  the  light  of  Mr.  Asquith's  state- 

66 


THE  SALONIKI  ADVENTURE 

merit  to  the  House  of  Commons  on  November  3, 
1915;  "on  September  21,"  the  British  prime  min- 
ister declared,  ''after  the  Bulgarian  mobilization 
had  begun,  Premier  Venizelos  asked  France  and 
Great  Britain  for  150,000  men  on  the  express 
understanding  that  Greece  would  mobilize  also." 

When  Venizelos  gave  me  the  statement  which 
I  have  just  quoted,  he  said,  speaking  of  the 
king's  action  in  dismissing  him  as  prime  minister, 
"The  Constitution  of  Greece  has  ceased  to 
exist." 

Later  I  had  occasion  to  question  King  Con- 
stantine  on  this  head.  "The  only  violations  of 
the  Constitution  that  I  know  anything  about," 
he  said,  "were  those  committed  by  Venizelos: 
first,  when  he  authorized  foreign  troops  to  land 
on  Greek  soil  without  the  consent  of  the  Greek 
chamber;  and,  second,  when  he  tried  to  exercise 
the  power  of  declaring  war  which,  by  Article 
XXXII  of  the  Constitution,  is  vested  solely  in 
the  crown." 


67 


CHAPTER  V 

SERBIA   ABANDONED 

General  Sarrail  arrived  in  Saloniki  in  a  bad 
temper.  The  complete  change  of  plan  from  the 
Syrian  expedition  which  he  had  been  assigned  to 
command,  and  which  promised  well,  to  this  wild- 
goose  chase  in  Macedonia,  filled  him  with  mis- 
givings. He  sensed  a  political  intrigue  in 
France  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  expedition, 
and  had  a  premonition  that  he  was  to  be  made 
the  scapegoat  of  a  failure.  Distinctly  active  in 
French  politics,  a  partizan  and  political  protege 
of  Caillaux,  General  Sarrail  felt  that  he  had  rea- 
son to  fear  he  was  being  sent  to  Saloniki  to  get 
him  out  of  France,  and  that  he  would  be  left  in 
Macedonia,  without  sufficient  support,  to  bear  the 
blame  of  an  unsuccessful  campaign.  A  personal 
and  a  political  enemy  of  General  de  Castelnau, 
then  the  leading  influence  in  the  French  army, 
Maurice  Sarrail  knew  that  he  had  no  mercy  to 

68 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

expect  at  the  hands  of  the  French  staff  if  he  made 
a  misstep. 

Whatever  else  he  may  be,  Sarrail  is  a  first-rate 
soldier.  He  landed  in  Saloniki  October  12,  just 
a  week  after  the  first  French  contingent  had  dis- 
embarked. One  glance  at  conditions  in  ^lace- 
donia  filled  him  with  gloom.  Everything  was  to 
be  done — organization,  sanitation,  port  arrange- 
ments, policing,  transport,  road  building,  housing 
for  an  army  and  its  commissary,  and  the  dis- 
charge and  storage  of  war  material  and  supplies. 
The  country  furnished  nothing,  not  even  the 
beasts  of  burden  and  wagons  essential  to  moving 
the  impedimenta  of  an  army. 

I  had  a  long  talk  with  him  in  his  personal 
quarters  in  the  French  school  shortly  after  his 
arrival.  The  room  was  bare  of  carpet ;  one  small 
table  held  maps  over  whose  inaccuracies  Sarrail 
swore  roundly;  in  one  corner  was  a  narrow  bed, 
in  another,  a  wooden  box  containing  the  com- 
mander's kit.  There  was  one  chair,  which  I  was 
constrained  to  take;  Sarrail  sat  on  the  bed; 
Colonel  Jacquemot,  his  chief  of  staff,  on  the  box. 
He  asked  me  many  questions  about  the  dispo- 
sition of  the  Greeks  to  join  the  expedition  into 

69 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Serbia.  I  told  him  frankly  that  they  would  be 
likely  to  do  so  only  if  convinced  that  a  really 
strong  Allied  force  would  be  sent  to  support  them. 

"What  about  King  Constantine?"  he  asked. 
"Is  he  Boc/ie  or  is  n't  he?" 

"No  more  than  you  or  I,"  I  told  him.  "But 
he  's  a  soldier,  and  he  knows  this  country  up  here. 
He 's  taking  no  chances  that  you  would  n't  con- 
sider good  yourself." 

He  made  me  a  statement,  publication  of  which 
he  authorized : 

It  would  be  of  no  use  to  pretend  that  the  task  of 
the  Allied  armies  in  the  Balkans  at  this  moment  is  not 
a  difficult  one,  but  it  is  in  no  wise  insurmountable. 
The  present  lack  of  transportation,  the  bad  condition 
of  the  roads,  in  which  men  and  horses  easily  get  stuck 
in  the  mud;  a  single-line  railway,  exposed  in  many 
places  to  attacks  by  the  enemy  without  great  risk  to 
himself — all  of  these  things  combine  to  make  our  un- 
dertaking most  difficult.  There  is,  therefore,  nothing 
to  be  gained  in  attempting  serious  action  before  we 
have  finished  our  preparations  with  all  the  care  that 
conditions  require.  The  result  will  prove  whether  we 
were  right  or  not  to  undertake  this  business. 

As  for  Greeks,  the  people  have  given  us  a  generous 
and  friendly  welcome.  I  have  only  admiration  for  the 
Greek  soldiers.  The  officers  especially  seem  to  me  to 
be  first-class.  If  the  Greeks  decide  that  their  own  in- 
terests behoove  them  to  join  the  Allies,  they  cannot 
fail  to  be  of  great  value  to  our  common  cause. 

70 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

General  Sarrail  made  no  concealment  of  his 
anxiety  as  to  the  number  of  troops  he  was  to  be 
given.  Yet  he  began  his  operations  two  days 
after  his  arrival,  starting  a  mixed  detachment 
under  Colonel  Ruef  up  the  railway  hne  into 
Serbia.  From  this  moment  until  the  Austrians 
and  Germans  completed  the  conquest  of  Serbia, 
November  25,  Sarrail  never  had  more  than 
35,000  men.  The  British,  who  were  not  under 
Sarrail's  conmiand  at  that  time,  were  a  confusion 
of  miscellaneous,  uncoordinated  troops,  the  relics 
of  regiments,  battalions,  brigades,  and  divisions 
decimated  by  the  Turks  on  Gallipoli  and  not  yet 
reformed  into  any  cohesive  force.  A  part  of  the 
Tenth  Division  and  what  was  left  of  the  Irish 
Brigade  were  of  some  use ;  the  rest  might  as  well 
have  been  in  England.  Moreover,  they  had  no 
orders  to  move  from  Saloniki  and  remained  there 
inactive  while  Sarrail  stretched  his  line  far  be- 
yond the  point  of  safety  in  an  effort  to  occupy 
strategical  positions  as  far  into  Serbia  as  pos- 
sible, trusting  that  he  might  receive  reinforce- 
ments later  to  fill  in  the  great  gaps  he  was  leav- 
ing in  his  line. 

General  Mahon,  the  British  commander,  tried 
71 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

repeatedly  to  provoke  instructions  from  Eng- 
land. He  received  none.  Finally,  on  his  own 
responsibility,  on  October  26,  he  undertook  to 
release  the  French  forces  guarding  the  Belaschitz, 
a  plateau  in  the  Dedeli-Causli-Doiran  region. 
General  de  Lardemelle  was  at  Kafardar,  his  line 
pushed  beyond  the  Rajhdehcke  River  in  the  di- 
rection of  Babunas  Pass ;  General  Leblois  was  at 
Negotine,  his  line  stretching  to  Gradsko  and  the 
mountain  of  Kara  Hodzali,  in  the  direction  of 
Veles;  General  Bailloud  occupied  Strumnitza 
station,  guarding  the  single  railway  line  of  com- 
munications with  Saloniki  and  threatening  a 
descent  into  the  valley  of  the  Strumnitza  River 
in  Bulgarian  territory  whenever  a  sufficient  force 
should  arrive;  to  the  east  the  British  kept  the 
passes  and  prevented  a  sudden  flank  attack  upon 
Saloniki  from  the  north. 

It  was  all  tentative,  all  dependent  on  the  ar- 
rival of  more  troops.  Already  the  Serbs  were  in 
full  retreat  from  the  Danube,  and  no  Allied  re- 
inforcements were  in  sight.  It  was  heartbreak- 
ing business.  Not  only  General  Sarrail,  but 
every  French  soldier  realized  the  perilous  game 
the  Allies  were  playing  with   their   overtaxed 

72 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

line.  Officers  and  men  were  "jumpy."  The 
French  were  irritated  at  the  British  inaction,  and 
the  British  themselves  were  in  despair  over  the 
weird  scrap-bag  conglomeration  of  which  their 
forces  consisted. 

The  Greeks,  mobihzed  for  war,  looked  on  and 
made  unfavorable  estimates  of  the  Allied  forces. 
Had  they  wavered  about  joining  the  Entente 
armies,  what  they  saw  in  Saloniki  would  have  de- 
cided them  against  the  venture.  Munitions  were 
lacking,  discipline  was  bad,  organization,  espe- 
cially among  the  British  units,  was  pitiful.  Bad 
camp  sites  were  chosen  and  had  to  be  altered. 
The  equipment  was  suited  for  the  deserts  of  Gal- 
lipoli,  not  the  mountains  of  INIacedonia.  The 
transport  horses  were  huge  animals  that  never  in 
the  world  could  negotiate  the  steep  mountain 
paths  of  Serbia;  there  was  heavy  artillery  that  no 
bridge  in  Serbia  or  Bulgaria  would  stand  up 
under,  and  no  mountain  artillerj^  at  all;  there 
were  immense  motor  drays  that  would  scarcely 
pass  through  the  narrow  streets  of  Saloniki, 
much  less  along  the  primeval  Macedonian  roads. 
The  men  were  clothed  for  the  heat  of  the  Dar- 
danelles, not  the  penetrating  cold  of  Macedonia ; 

73 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

they  were  paid  in  French  or  British  money,  both 
at  a  loss  of  exchange  in  neutral  Greece,  and  the 
Jews  who  comi^rise  the  local  population  of  Sa- 
loniki  accepted  these  uncurrent  coins  at  a  dis- 
count that  carried  with  it  a  superficial  but  un- 
fortunate impression  of  impaired  Allied  credit. 
The  intelligence  service  was  recruited  among  the 
riff-raff  of  the  refugees  from  Thrace  and  Asia 
Minor — Armenians,  Levantines,  islanders  of  un- 
certain citizenship  and  dubious  honesty.  The 
army  purchasing  was  recklessly  extravagant. 
The  frugal  Greeks  were  appalled  by  the  waste, 
the  confusion,  the  lack  of  intelligent  preparation. 
On  the  other  hand  the  mere  sight  of  the  Greeks 
inactive  while  the  French  were  fighting  enraged 
the  latter.  The  dirt  and  disorder  of  Saloniki,  so 
recently  a  Turkish  city,  filled  both  the  French 
and  the  British  with  disgust.  The  strange  cos- 
tumes of  the  local  population  gave  an  impres- 
sion of  lack  of  civilization,  and  the  French  and 
British  promptly  treated  and  spoke  of  the  Greeks 
as  "natives."  Moreover,  the  Greeks,  resentful 
of  the  presence  of  a  foreign  army  on  their  soil, 
were  far  from  helpful.  The  Jewish  tradesmen 
found  the  opportunity  golden  to  put  up  their 

74 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

prices.  The  Greek  soldiers,  on  mere  route 
marches,  filled  the  roads  where  the  Allies  wanted 
to  move  troops  that  were  going  to  do  battle. 
The  railroad  service  in  civilian  hands  was  inade- 
quate for  efficient  military  transport.  The 
Greek  customs  officers  made  endless  difficulties 
about  the  landing  of  supplies ;  the  port  authorities 
gave  preference  to  Greek  merchant  vessels  while 
Allied  troop  ships  hung  about  the  harbor,  wait- 
ing to  dock.  The  telegraph  service  was  wretched, 
the  Greek  censorship  infinitely  annoying. 

The  Alhes  were  also  at  a  language  disadvan- 
tage. Greek-English  and  Greek-French  inter- 
preters were  rare,  high-priced,  and  untrust- 
worthy. An  officer  who  sent  his  orderly  to  buy 
a  stamp  might  wait  half  a  day  for  it — the  man 
secure  in  the  excuse  that  he  could  not  make  him- 
self understood.  Worst  of  all,  the  presence  of 
Germans,  Austrians,  and  Turks  among  them 
was  unbearable  to  many,  especially  the  French. 
They,  at  war  with  the  Germans,  meeting  Ger- 
mans in  streets  and  cafes,  crushed  against  them 
in  street-cars,  hearing  their  hated  accents,  catch- 
ing their  hostile  glances!  Two  newspapers  in 
French,  but  subsidized  by  the  Austrian  consu- 

77 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

late,  made  the  French  see  red  with  their  daily 
reports  of  Allied  defeats,  created  out  of  whole 
cloth.  There  was  the  consciousness,  too,  that 
they  were  constantly  watched  by  the  spies  of 
their  enemies,  their  movements  reported,  their 
numbers  and  equipment  catalogued.  Had  they 
felt  their  organization  effective,  it  would  have 
mattered  less.  But  to  know  that  they  were  cut- 
ting a  poor  figure  in  the  eyes,  not  only  of  the 
Greeks,  but  of  their  enemies,  was  humiliating. 
They  resented  it  keenly;  they  resented  all  the 
impediments  to  their  work  and  the  hostility  to 
their  presence.  JNIost  of  all,  they  resented  hav- 
ing been  sent  on  a  wild-goose  chase,  and  the 
failure  of  the  expedition.  They  resented  feehng 
that  the  despised  Greeks  could  probably  have 
done  the  job  better,  and  that  the  Greeks  knew 
it.  Then  there  was  fear,  also, — that  mistrust 
which  is  the  inevitable  concomitant  of  all  war. 
"Who  is  not  with  me,  is  against  me."  The 
Greeks  were  not  with  them.  Might  they  not  be 
against  them?  And  the  Greek  forces  in  Mace- 
donia outnumbered  the  Allied  armies  five  to  one. 
All  of  this  irritation,  this  resentment,  this  fear, 
found  its  reflection  in  the  rapidly  shaping  En- 

78 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

tente  policy  in  Athens.  To  the  Venizelos  cabinet, 
purely  a  party  and  personal  ministry  entirely 
under  the  thumb  of  the  Cretan,  succeeded,  on 
October  7,  a  national  ministry,  headed  by  Former 
Premier  Alexander  Zaimis,  director  of  the  Na- 
tional Bank  of  Greece,  an  able,  patriotic,  tried 
administrator,  friendly  to  the  Entente  and — un- 
like Venizelos— not  a  politician,  having  no  ambi- 
tions to  satisf5%  no  political  organization  to  main- 
tain at  the  expense  of  the  public  treasury.  With 
the  exception  of  the  ministers  of  war  and  marine, 
who  were  respectively  a  general  and  an  admiral, 
the  cabinet  was  made  up  of  former  prime  minis- 
ters— reactionaries  all,  save  Zaimis,  but  men  of 
high  purpose  and  unimpeachable  integrity.  The 
Boule  continued  its  sessions,  Venizelos  conserv- 
ing his  majority  and,  according  to  his  phrase, 
"tolerating"  the  new  cabinet. 

The  Zaimis  government's  first  act  was  to  re- 
new the  declaration  of  "benevolent  neutrality" 
with  which  Venizelos  had  defined  the  position  of 
Greece  toward  the  Entente  in  August,  1914. 
The  second  was  to  issue  a  lengthy  statement  of 
the  Government's  position  on  the  Greco-Serbian 
treaty  of  alliance.     There  were  three  general 

79 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

lines  of  argument:  that  the  alliance  was  exclu- 
sively Balkan  in  scope  and  could  not  be  justly 
interpreted  to  force  Greece  into  a  general  Euro- 
pean war;  that  Serbia  had  assumed  other  sub- 
sequent engagements  with  the  Entente  that 
placed  her  in  the  impossibility  of  fulfilling  her 
part  of  the  joint  military  agreement,  thus  releas- 
ing the  Greeks  from  the  performance  of  their 
part;  and,  finally,  that  a  nation,  no  more  than  a 
person,  can  legally  contract  to  its  own  destruc- 
tion, and  that  the  inability  of  the  Serbs  and  the 
failure  of  the  Allies  to  concentrate  along  the 
Bulgaro- Serbian  frontiers  the  number  of  troops 
which  had  been  judged  by  both  the  Serbian  and 
the  Greek  staffs,  in  the  cold  judgment  of  peace, 
to  be  essential  to  a  successful  campaign,  rendered 
the  venture  near  enough  certain  to  destruction 
for  the  Greeks  to  release  them  from  any  obliga- 
tion. 

On  the  first  point,  Venizelos's  own  declaration 
to  me  that  "the  Greco- Serbian  treaty  foresaw 
only  the  possibility  of  a  Balkan  war,"  appears  to 
be  final.  Since  giving  me  that  statement,  how- 
ever, he  has  made  me  another  very  recently,  in 
which,  to  justify  his  present  criticism  of  King 

80 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

Constantine's  attitude,  he  reviewed  the  negotia- 
tions for  the  Greco-Serbian  treaty  and  sought  to 
prove  to  me  that  his  statement  of  October  5, 1915, 
was  not  true,  by  asserting  that  Serbia  delayed 
the  ratification  of  the  treaty  until  Greece  was 
forced  to  concede  that  it  might  extend  beyond  the 
Balkans  in  its  scope,  and  alleging  at  the  same 
time  that  King  Constantine  was  present  at  the 
discussion  of  this  point  and  himself  personally 
accepted  the  Serbian  proviso.  It  is  difficult  to 
reconcile  this  last  statement,  made  evidently  in 
support  of  a  position  for  which  a  defense  is  neces- 
sary, with  the  former  one,  as  well  as  with  Venize- 
los's  own  attitude  in  respect  to  the  alliance  when 
prime  minister  in  October  and  November,  1914. 
JNIoreover,  in  May,  1914,  before  the  European 
War,  Greece  had  sounded  Serbia  as  to  the  appli- 
cability of  the  treaty  of  alliance  should  Greece 
go  to  war  with  Turkey  over  the  islands  remain- 
ing in  dispute  between  the  two  countries.  On 
June  1,  1914,  the  Greek  representative  in  Bel- 
grade was  advised  "not  to  push  things  too  far," 
as  Serbia  was  not  disposed  to  extend  the  alliance 
to  cover  such  a  contingency.  Prince  Nicholas 
of  Greece,  also,  who  had  quite  as  much  to  do  with 

81 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

framing  the  treaty  as  did  Venizelos,  tells  me  posi- 
tively that  only  a  war  with  Bulgaria  was  con- 
templated by  its  provisions,  and  cites  the  minute 
military  dispositions  made  in  the  tactical  annex  as 
proof  of  this  assertion.  And,  indeed,  the  fact 
that  Serbia  did  not  insist  upon  the  fulfilment  of 
the  terms  of  alliance  from  the  very  outbreak  of 
the  war  would  seem  to  indicate  that  this  was  the 
accepted  view  of  the  treaty  until  Venizelos,  for 
reasons  connected  with  politics  within  Greece, 
chose  to  give  the  document  another  interpreta- 
tion. 

On  the  second  point  the  case  seems  clearer. 
Granting  the  Entente  claim  that  Greece  was 
bound  to  aid  her  ally  by  the  treaty  of  alliance, 
she  was  bound  only  under  definite  conditions  laid 
down  in  the  document  itself;  to  wit,  that  Serbia 
furnish  150,000  bayonets  concentrated  at  spe- 
cified points.  Since  Serbia  could  not  do  this 
directly,  it  is  necessary  to  admit  that  she  might  be 
permitted  to  do  it  by  proxy;  that  is,  to  supply 
Entente  bayonets  to  replace  her  own.  This 
view  the  Entente  powers  themselves  accepted. 
Sir  Edward  Grey  stating  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  November  3,  1915,  that  "a  definite  num- 

82 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

ber  of  men  would  be  sent  to  Saloniki  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  enabling  Greece  to  fulfil  her 
treaty  obligations  with  Serbia."  The  definite 
number  of  men  required  by  the  treaty  was  never 
sent.  Greece,  therefore,  seems  fully  released  of 
her  obhgations,  even  according  to  Sir  Edward 
Grey. 

As  to  the  third  point,  no  man  who  was  in 
Saloniki  and  Serbia  with  the  Allied  expedition- 
ary force  could  for  a  moment  harbor  any  illu- 
sions as  to  the  possibility  of  a  successful  outcome 
to  the  adventure.  Not  even  150,000  bayonets, 
equipped  as  were  the  forces  the  French  and  Eng- 
lish sent  to  Saloniki,  would  have  served  to  stem 
the  tide  of  Germans,  Austrians,  and  Bulgarians. 
Greece,  neutral,  was  saved  from  invasion; 
Greece,  a  belligerent,  would  unquestionably  have 
been  crushed  as  readily  as  was  Serbia — and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  what  useful  purpose  would  have 
been  served  the  Entente,  Serbia,  or  Greece  her- 
self by  such  an  eventualit5^ 

It  was  easy  for  any  one  attending  the  sessions 
of  the  Boule  during  this  period  to  see  that  Veni- 
zelos's  "toleration"  of  the  Zaimis  cabinet  was  a 
mere  political  manoeuver.     It  could  not  last,  and 

83 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

it  endured  less  than  a  month.  Free  to  express 
himself  without  responsibility,  Venizelos  spent 
his  time  consolidating  his  majority  and  exhibit- 
ing a  truculence  toward  his  opponents  that  was 
bound  to  end  in  the  overthrow  of  the  ministry. 
In  a  last  desperate  effort  to  persuade  the  Greeks 
to  take  the  brunt  of  the  work  in  Macedonia,  the 
Entente  offered  Greece  the  island  of  Cypress  as 
a  compensation,  hinting  at  further  concessions 
to  be  made  after  the  war.  General  Yannakitsas, 
the  minister  of  war,  voiced  the  opinion  of  the 
King  and  the  general  staff  in  stating  that  "com- 
l^ensations"  could  not  compensate  for  military 
weakness ;  that  alluring  offers  would  not  take  the 
place  of  the  soldiers  necessary  to  a  successful 
campaign  in  Serbia.  King  Constantine  himself 
said:  "The  whole  world  will  not  persuade  me  to 
offer  up  my  country  as  a  sacrifice  on  the  altar  of 
the  Entente's  military  unpreparedness." 

The  line  between  considering  the  Balkan  situa- 
tion as  a  political  or  as  a  military  question  was 
sharply  drawn  in  the  Boule  on  November  4. 
Venizelos,  sponsor  of  the  former  view,  returned 
personally  to  the  charge,  speaking  of  the  obliga- 
tions of  Greece  toward  Serbia  and  the  benefits  to 

84) 


Photo^aph  by  the  Author, 

KING   PETER  (Jl    .SLlUilA   AT   AHUYPSOS 
"Sitting  on  a  bench  in  the  warm  sun" 


SERBIA  ABANDONED 

be  gained  by  joining  the  Entente,  making  a  com- 
bined appeal  to  the  sentimentahty  and  the 
cupidity  of  his  countrymen.  General  Yannakit- 
sas  took  his  stand  sharply  as  a  practical  soldier — 
that  all  of  this  was  beside  the  main  point  of 
whether  the  campaign  could  be  won  or  not  with 
the  forces  available ;  and  he  thought  not.  There 
was  a  sharp  "incident"  in  the  chamber.  Veni- 
zelos  triumphed  on  purely  party  lines,  though  the 
vote  of  147  to  114  showed  a  marked  decrease  in 
his  original  majority.  Za'imis  resigned.  The 
fate  of  Serbia,  could  the  aid  of  Greece  have  saved 
her,  was  sealed. 

JNIonths  later,  sitting  on  a  bench  in  the  warm 
sun,  looking  out  over  JNIt.  Olympus,  snow- 
crowned,  King  Peter  of  Serbia  told  me  what  it 
meant  to  the  waiting  Serbs — this  whole  Saloniki 
muddle  of  intrigue,  mismanagement,  and  need- 
less disaster. 

The  old  man's  head  sank  on  his  breast,  as  he 
talked.  His  eyes  closed  wearily.  It  was  as  if 
his  soul  had  left  the  bent,  worn,  pain-racked 
body  and  had  flown  over  the  far  mountains  to  his 
own  people. 

"If  only  they  had  come  a  little  sooner,  our  al- 
87 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

lies!"  he  said.  "I  used  to  tell  my  men:  'Hold 
on!  Just  a  little  longer!  They  have  said  they 
will  come,  and  they  will  come!'  And  they  be- 
lieved me  and  held  on. 

*' You  know  we  could  n't  even  see  the  Germans ! 
It  was  all  artillery — machine-made  war!  My 
men  used  to  grind  their  teeth,  and  the  tears  would 
run  down  their  poor,  thin  faces,  and  they  would 
say:  'If  only  we  could  just  get  at  them!  We 
would  show  them !' 

"And  then,  as  I  rode  by  their  lines,  I  could  see 
them  shaking  their  heads  and  nodding  at  me  and 
whispering  among  themselves.  'Poor  old  King!' 
they  were  saying,  'he  still  believes  the  Allies  will 
come  in  time  to  save  us!'  " 


88 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   FIRST   BLOCKADE 

Stephen  Skouloudis  succeeded  Zaimis  as 
premier.  He  was  regarded  as  a  capable  man, 
satisfactory  to  the  Entente.  JNIr.  H.  Charles 
Woods,  writing  in  the  "Fortnightly  Review"  of 
September,  1916,  refers  to  him  as  "a  very  far- 
seeing  man,  who,  if  he  were  opposed  to  the  in- 
tervention of  Greece  in  the  war,  was  in  favor  of 
neutrality,  not  to  further  the  interests  of  Ger- 
many, but  in  order  to  safeguard  those  of  his  own 
country."  He  repeated  Greece's  assurances  of 
a  policy  of  "benevolent  neutrality"  and  set  about 
seeking  a  definition  of  the  position  of  Greece  in 
relation  to  the  Entente  powers  on  that  basis. 
Such  a  definition  appeared  essential  to  both 
sides.  On  November  3,  in  a  debate  in  Parlia- 
ment, Lord  Charles  Beresford  declared:  "Un- 
til the  Government  has  a  clear  and  definite  policy 
in  the  near  East,  the  war  will  continue  and  Eng- 

89 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

land  will  lose  thousands  of  lives  and  waste  mil- 
lions [pounds,  not  dollars]  of  money." 

The  German  conquest  of  Serbia  was  rapidly 
drawing  to  a  close.  The  Serbian  army,  com- 
pletely disorganized  by  the  attack  from  two  sides, 
was  seeking  escape  through  Albania  to  the 
Adriatic  coast.  The  work  of  the  Bulgarians 
against  Serbia  was  virtually  finished,  and  they 
turned  their  attention  to  the  hopelessly  inade- 
quate French  force  extended  into  Serbia  along 
the  railway  line  as  far  as  Gradsko,  at  the  junc- 
tion of  the  Vardar  and  the  Tscherna  rivers.  A 
retirement  of  the  French  expeditionary  corps  was 
evidently  a  mere  question  of  days,  since  the  Bul- 
gars  greatly  outnumbered  the  newcomers  and 
were  already  effecting  a  concentration  of  troops 
for  serious  attack. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  Entente  gov- 
ernments grew  suddenly  uneasy  for  the  safety 
of  their  expeditionary  force.  No  thought  seems 
to  have  been  given  what  might  happen  in  case 
the  French  were  compelled  to  retreat  into  Greek 
territory.  Venizelos,  who  had  induced  the 
French  and  British  to  come  to  Saloniki,  was  no 
longer  premier  and  could  not  be  depended  upon 

90 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

to  bend  or  break  the  Greek  Constitution  to  meet 
any  requirements  of  the  Alhed  miHtary  com- 
manders. The  Greeks  had  shown  very  plainly 
that  they  did  not  hke  the  presence  of  strange 
troops  on  their  soil ;  and  the  Greeks  had  a  large 
force  concentrated  in  Saloniki  and  its  vicinity,  of 
whose  temj)er  the  Allies  were  uncertain. 

No  attempt  was  made  to  reach  a  frank  under- 
standing with  the  Greek  king  or  the  Greek  gen- 
eral staff.     No  effort  was  made  to  handle  a  mili- 
tary situation  in  a  military  way,  through  an  ar- 
rangement with  the  competent  military  authori- 
ties of  Greece.     King  Constantine's  suggestion 
that  the  military  requirements  of  the  retiring 
army  be  fixed  in  joint  consultation  by  representa- 
tives of  the  Greek  and  Allied  staffs  was  rejected. 
Such  a  practical  solution  of  the  problem,  by  be- 
ing unofficial,  would  have  saved  Greece  friction 
with  the  Central  empires.     The  Entente  would 
not  have  it.     Instead,  the  Entente  ministers  in 
Athens    put    a    hypothetical    question    to    the 
Skouloudis  cabinet:     Should  the  French  force 
then  in  Serbia  be  driven  back  upon  Greek  soil  by 
the  Bulgarians,  what  would  be  the  attitude  of 
the  Greek  Government? 

91 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

According  to  international  law,  an  armed  force 
compelled  by  an  enemy  to  seek  refuge  in  the  ter- 
ritory of  a  neutral  country  must  be  disarmed  and 
interned  precisely  as  the  British  naval  reserves 
who  fled  from  Antwerp  were  disarmed  and  in- 
terned by  Holland.  Prime  Minister  Skouloudis 
so  replied.  International  law,  however,  has 
played  so  small  a  part  in  defining  the  attitude  of 
the  Entente  toward  Greece  that  Mr.  Skouloudis's 
answer,  albeit  theoretically  correct,  may  be  re- 
garded as  of  doubtful  wisdom.  If  the  Entente 
desired  to  suspend  international  law,  certainly 
Greece,  dependent  entirely  upon  the  Ally-con- 
trolled sea  for  bread,  was  in  no  position  to  in- 
voke international  law  to  shape  her  action.  Her 
best  course  would  probably  have  been  to  close 
her  eyes  to  the  violation  of  international  law  and 
try  to  manage  the  Central  empires  as  best  she 
could. 

It  is  difficult  to  see,  however,  how  a  theoretical 
declaration  of  this  sort  could  really  be  taken 
seriously  in  London  and  Paris.  The  spectacle 
of  35,000  French  troops  returning  from  Serbia 
being  disarmed  and  interned  by  the  Greek  army 
in  Saloniki  when  an  Allied  fleet  that  could  have 

92 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

destroyed  the  Greek  army  and  the  entire  city  as 
well  in  a  few  hours'  bombardment  lay  within 
rifle  shot  of  the  quaj's  of  the  ]Macedonian  capital, 
is  fantastic.  The  Greeks  themselves  certainly 
did  not  take  it  seriously,  and  they  regarded  this 
real  or  feigned  uneasiness  over  the  security 
of  the  Allied  army  as  a  mere  pretext  to  try  to 
force  the  Entente's  man,  Venizelos,  back  into 
power. 

"VVliatever  purpose  was  to  be  served  by  a  dis- 
play of  panic  over  the  safety  of  their  forces,  the 
method  employed  by  the  Entente  to  compel  a 
grant  of  large  powers  in  Greek  JNIacedonia  was 
drastic  and  immediate.  On  November  17,  the 
French  Government  ordered  the  port  authorities 
of  IMarseilles  to  pass  no  further  merchandise 
destined  to  Greece.  On  November  18,  Great 
Britain  issued  an  order  that  no  Greek  vessel 
should  be  allowed  to  proceed  to  its  destination. 
The  ship  bearing  to  Saloniki  the  English  Prin- 
cess Ahce  of  Battenberg,  the  wife  of  King  Con- 
stantine's  brother.  Prince  Andrew,  was  stopped 
and  held  on  the  high  seas.  The  price  of  coal  at 
water  level  in  the  Pirjeus  ran  up  to  $40  per  ton 
in  a  few  days.     Greece  was  totally  unprej^ared 

93 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

for  a  blockade  of  this  sort,  and  its  effect  was  felt 
instantly. 

On  November  19,  the  British  legation  issued  a 
communique  explaining  the  action  of  the  Allied 
powers : 

Because  of  the  attitude  of  the  Hellenic  Government 
in  regard  to  certain  questions  touching  closely  the 
security  and  liberty  of  action  to  which  the  Alhed  troops 
have  right  under  the  conditions  of  their  disembarking 
on  Greek  territory,  the  Allied  Powers  have  deemed  it 
necessary  to  take  certain  measures  which  will  have  the 
effect  of  suspending  the  economic  and  commercial  facili- 
ties which  Greece  has  received  from  them  heretofore. 

It  is  not  the  intention  of  the  Allied  Powers  to  con- 
strain Greece  to  abandon  her  neutrality  which,  in  their 
eyes,  is  the  best  guarantee  of  her  interests. 

Just  what  rights  the  disembarkment  of  the 
Allied  troops  on  Greek  soil,  in  violation  of  Arti- 
cle XCIX  of  the  Greek  Constitution  and  in  the 
face  of  a  formal  protest  of  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment, had  given  the  Entente  powers  in  Greece, 
were  not  made  clear.  Nor  were  the  economic 
and  commercial  facilities  Greece  had  hitherto  re- 
ceived from  the  Entente  particularized;  for 
some  time  they  had  seemed  to  consist  chiefly  of 
having  vessels  bound  to  Greek  ports  delayed  for 
weeks  on  end  at  Gibraltar  or  Malta  and  their 

94 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

cargoes  frequently  confiscated.  The  paragraph 
about  not  constraining  Greece  to  abandon  her 
neutrality  struck  most  Greeks  as  highly  ironical; 
they  felt  that  it  was  at  bottom  precisely  to  se- 
cure the  aid  of  Greece  in  their  war  that  co- 
ercive measures  were  being  applied  by  the  En- 
tente. 

Xo  demands  were  made,  however,  of  the  Greek 
Govermiient  until  a  week  after  the  blockade  went 
into  practical  effect.  IMeanwhile,  to  clear  the 
situation  up  once  for  all.  Cabinet  jMinister  Denys 
Cochin  for  France  and  Lord  Kitchener  for  Eng- 
land visited  both  Athens  and  Saloniki.  M. 
Denys  Cochin,  whose  friendship  for  Greece  had 
endeared  him  to  every  Greek,  was  well  fitted  by 
that  fact  to  conduct  the  diplomatic  negotiations 
which  the  situation  rendered  imperative;  Lord 
Kitchener,  as  the  first  (and  the  last)  representa- 
tive of  the  Allies  to  look  upon  the  Entente's  rela- 
tions in  the  near  East  with  a  purely  military  eye, 
was  distinctly  indicated  to  pronounce  upon  the 
necessities  of  the  situation  arising  from  the 
perilous  position  in  which  the  failure  of  the 
Serbian  adventure  had  placed  the  Allied  army 
in  Macedonia,  as  well  as  upon  the  continuance 

95 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  a  venture  which,  so  far,  had  proved  not  only 
profitless  but  costly  in  loss  of  prestige. 

M.  Denys  Cochin's  talk  with  King  Constan- 
tine  on  November  18  was  satisfactory  in  every 
way.  The  Greek  monarch  gave  his  personal 
word  that  under  no  circumstances,  whatever  the 
fate  of  the  Allied  expedition  in  Macedonia,  would 
the  Greek  troops  ever  attack  the  Allies.  As 
commander-in-chief  of  the  Greek  army,  he  was 
in  a  position  to  carry  out  the  assurance.  At  the 
same  time  he  displayed  a  willingness  to  aid  the 
Entente  in  every  practical  way  short  of  joining 
them.  The  retreat  of  the  French  foi'ces  from 
Serbia  was  plainly  imminent.  King  Constan- 
tine  offered  to  cover  the  flanks  of  the  retiring 
army  with  his  Greek  troops  against  any  attempt 
to  cut  it  off  from  its  base.  In  general,  the  scope 
of  the  Allied  military  operations  in  IMacedonia 
was  defined  in  a  way  entirely  satisfactory  to  the 
French.  The  Greek  sovereign  made  it  clear  to 
the  French  cabinet  minister  that  his  own  posi- 
tion was  one  of  sympathy  and  friendliness  for  the 
Entente;  but  that  in  his  estimation  the  interests 
of  Greece  made  it  imperative  that  she  remain 
neutral   at   least   for   the   present.     JNI.   Denys 

96 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

Cochin  left  for  Saloniki  the  following  day  to  con- 
vey the  results  of  his  conference  with  King  Con- 
stantine  to  General  Sarrail. 

While  M.  Denys  Cochin  was  in  Saloniki  re- 
porting to  General  Sarrail,  Lord  Kitchener  ar- 
rived in  Athens.  He  had  visited  Saloniki  pre- 
viously and  had  conferred  with  General  Sarrail 
on  the  situation.  He  knew  better  than  any  one 
the  precarious  position  of  the  Allied  armies  in 
Macedonia.  He  had  been  witness  of  the  futility 
of  the  expedition  as  it  had  been  undertaken  and 
of  the  failure  in  which  it  had  resulted.  Better 
equipped  than  any  man  to  judge  of  the  military 
situation  of  the  Entente  in  the  near  East,  Lord 
Kitchener  talked  with  King  Constantine  as 
soldier  to  soldier. 

They  understood  one  another  perfectly  and 
were  in  accord  at  once.  The  British  war  minis- 
ter explained  that  he  had  never  approved  the 
Serbian  adventure  and  that  it  had  been  only  at 
the  insistence  of  the  French  that  it  was  under- 
taken.^    He  declared  that  in  his  opinion  the  war 

1  Cf.  M.  Palnlev6's  report  of  the  findings  of  the  committees 
of  the  French  Chamher  on  war,  the  navy,  and  foreign  affairs, 
of  August  13,  1915:  "In  view  of  the  fact  that  all  delays  and  all 
setbacks  increase  the  danger,  and  that  the  issue  of  the  war  is 
bound  up  with  the  taking  of  Constantinople,  we  recommend  the 

97 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

would  be  decided  in  France,  not  in  Bulgaria,  and 
that  effort  spent  on  minor  fronts,  like  that  of 
Macedonia,  was  bootless  waste.  Every  state- 
ment he  made  confirmed  the  wisdom  of  King 
Constantine  in  having  kept  clear  of  the  Serbian 
hazard.  Lord  Kitchener's  attitude  toward  the 
expedition  fostered  in  the  Greek  sovereign  the 
hope  that  once  the  failure  of  the  attempt  to 
rescue  Serbia  had  been  registered,  the  Allied 
war  council  would  decide  to  abandon  the  Balkan 
enterprise  and  withdraw  their  armies  from 
Greece.  This  hope  was  strengthened  by  the  fact 
that  the  very  day  before  Lord  Kitchener's  visit. 
General  Sir  Charles  G.  Monro  had  declared 
that  the  GaUipoli  campaign  ought  to  be  aban- 
doned. 

King  Constantine  felt,  after  his  talk  with  the 
British  war  minister,  that  he  had  every  reason 
to  believe  that  the  haphazard  operations  of  the 
Entente  in  the  near  East  would  be  given  up,  and 
that  Greece  would  be  left  tranquil  again.  It  was 
in  a  spirit  of  deep  satisfaction  over  this  prospect 
that  he  told  Lord  Kitchener  that  the  military 

government  to  take  such  urgent  measures  as  the  circumstances 
require  and  to  organize  an  expedition  that  will  ensure  the  fall  of 
Constantinople." 

98 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

authorities  of  Greece  had  never  for  a  moment 
considered  anything  so  fantastic  as  interning  the 
Alhed  forces ;  he  assured  the  British  general  that 
his  only  purpose  in  maintaining  his  troops  in 
iSIacedonia  was  not  hostility  to  the  Entente,  but 
the  legitimate  requirements  of  national  safety, 
especially  in  the  event  that  the  Allied  armies 
should  abandon  their  Macedonia  front  and  leave 
Greek  ^Macedonia  at  the  mercy  of  a  victorious 
Bulgarian  army,  already  in  the  field.  He  added, 
however,  that  the  moment  the  Allied  forces 
operating  in  INIacedonia  assumed  proportions 
sufficient  to  guarantee  a  serious  prosecution  of 
the  Balkan  campaign,  thus  rendering  Greece's 
own  defense  of  Greek  Macedonia  superfluous,  he 
would  not  refuse  to  consider  a  demobilization  of 
his  army,  or  at  least  a  withdrawal  of  the  Greek 
troops  from  Saloniki,  if  their  presence  there  were 
regarded  as  embarrassing  the  movements  of  the 
Allied  forces.  He  pointed  out  at  the  same  time, 
however,  that  the  Greek  army,  as  circumstances 
were,  constituted  the  most  potent  safeguard  of  the 
French  and  British  at  Saloniki,  since  the  Greek 
army  remained  out  of  the  war  only  so  long  as  the 
Bulgarians  did  not  invade  Greece.     Should  the 

99 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Entente's  enemies  essay  to  pursue  into  Greek  ter- 
ritory the  Allied  armies  falling  back  upon 
Saloniki,  they  were  well  aware  that  the  act  would 
force  Greece  into  war  on  the  side  of  the  Entente 
— a  result  they  were  far  from  desiring.  To  de- 
mand the  demobilization  of  the  Greek  army, 
King  Constantine  told  the  British  war  minister, 
would  be  equivalent  to  inviting  the  forces  of  the 
Central  empires  to  invade  Greece,  to  pursue  and 
to  seek  to  hem  in  and,  if  possible,  to  cut  off  Gen- 
eral Sarrail.  For  this  reason,  he  urged  that  the 
Greek  army  should  remain  where  it  was. 

Finally,  King  Constantine  repeated  to  Lord 
Kitchener  the  assurance  he  had  given  M.  Denys 
Cochin  that  under  no  circumstances  would  the 
Greek'  forces  attack  the  Allied  Orient  armies. 
Lord  Kitchener  accepted  it  and  believed  it.  He 
told  Admiral  Cardale,  of  the  British  naval  mis- 
sion, that  he  found  King  Constantine  a  straight- 
forward, fair-minded  soldier,  well-disposed  to- 
ward the  Allies,  and  with  a  very  clear  conception 
of  the  military  situation  in  the  near  East.  When 
Lord  Kitchener  left  Athens,  matters  seemed  to 
be  amicably  arranged. 

On  November  24,  M.  Denys  Cochin  returned 
100 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

from  Saloniki  with  new  and  much  further  reach- 
ing demands  from  General  Sarrail.  On  the  day 
following  his  arrival,  the  Entente  ministers  in 
Athens  presented  a  formal  joint  memorandum 
to  the  Skouloudis  govermnent  requiring  written 
assurances  confirming  those  verbal  assurances 
King  Constantine  had  given  Lord  Kitchener  and 
M.  Denys  Cochin,  and  generally  looking  "to  the 
use  of  Greek  territory  as  a  base  of  field  opera- 
tions." On  the  next  day,  in  a  new  note,  the  par- 
tial demobilization  of  the  Greek  army  was  de- 
manded, as  well  as  the  retirement  of  the  bulk  of 
the  Greek  force  from  Saloniki  and  the  right  of 
the  Allies  to  police  Greek  waters  in  search  of 
enemy  submarines.  To  insure  the  Greek  accept- 
ance of  these  exigencies,  the  "commercial  and 
economic  blockade"  of  Greece  was  stiffened.  No 
contact  between  Greece  and  the  outer  world  was 
permitted. 

The  demands  were,  of  course,  contrary  in  every 
way  to  the  spirit  of  King  Constantine's  talk  with 
Lord  Kitchener.  Far  from  presaging  an  early 
withdrawal  of  the  Allied  forces  from  Greece,  the 
demands  suggested  rather  a  permanent  Entente 
occupation  of  Saloniki,  at  least  for  the  duration 

101 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  the  war/  The  king's  purpose  of  defending 
his  own  territory  with  his  own  army  was  brushed 
aside  as  of  no  consequence.  No  assurance  of  any 
kind  was  given  as  to  what  would  become  of  Greek 
Macedonia  in  case  of  the  defeat  of  the  Alhed 
armies  and  no  arrangement  made  or  suggested  by 
which  King  Constant ine  could  secure  the  protec- 
tion of  his  own  territory  which  his  armies  had 
won  from  the  Bulgarians  so  short  a  time  before. 

Under  the  strangling  coercion  of  the  blockade, 
the  Skouloudis  cabinet  accepted  the  demands 
"in  principle,"  proposing  certain  modifications 
with  a  view  to  permitting  the  Greek  authorities 
at  least  to  share  in  the  execution  of  the  Entente 
demands  and  in  the  administration  of  so  large  a 
part  of  Greece's  own  affairs.  This  was  not  satis- 
factory to  the  Entente.  The  blockade  was  con- 
tinued and,  ignoring  the  Greek  suggestion  of  ad- 
ministrative cooperation,  General  Sarrail  con- 
strued this  "acceptance  in  principle"  to  authorize 
him  to  seize  the  Greek  railways  and  he  did  so. 

The  French  retreat  from  Serbia  was  drawing 

1  On  December  14,  Captain  Mathieu,  Sarrail's  confidential  staff 
officer,  put  the  matter  squarely:  "You  may  take  this  as  final," 
he  declared  to  a  number  of  correspondents,  "the  Allies  will  not 
quit  Saloniki  until  the   European  peace  has  been  signed." 

102 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

to  a  close.  On  December  3,  the  Bulgarians  oc- 
cupied Monastir.  It  was  no  longer  possible  to 
conceal  from  any  one  the  extent  of  the  Allied 
disaster  in  Serbia.  The  Serbs  were  crushed,  al- 
most annihilated;  the  French  were  beaten  back 
upon  their  base,  though  a  masterly  retreat  saved 
the  army.  The  British  in  the  Doiran  sector  lost 
several  batteries  of  heavy  guns.  The  Allied 
prestige  in  the  Balkans  was  gone.  Even  the 
French  and  English  soldiers  were  aware  of  the 
futility  of  the  whole  enterprise  and  its  costly  con- 
clusion. In  Saloniki,  no  less  than  in  London  and 
Paris,  the  question  was  asked  repeatedly,  Who 
is  to  blame? 

General  Sarrail  refused  to  shoulder  the  re- 
sponsibility. He  had  done  all  he  could  with  the 
troops  he  had  been  given,  under  grueling  condi- 
tions of  transport  and  commissary.  Naturally, 
the  governments  in  France  and  England  did  not 
care  to  take  the  odium  of  the  failure.  The  Serbs 
could  scarcely  be  blamed,  considering  all  that 
they  had  suffered — though  there  was  a  marked 
tendency  in  London  and  Paris  to  hold  them  re- 
sponsible for  their  own  defeat.  The  only  people 
upon  whom  the  full  responsibility  could  safely  be 

103 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

placed  was  the  Greeks.  Naturally  not  Veni- 
zelos,  as  Venizelos  had  tried  to  swing  the  Greek 
army  into  line  with  the  Entente,  and  it  was  hoped 
that  he  might  yet  be  able  to  do  it.  It  was,  there- 
fore, to  King  Constantine  that  the  entire  muddle 
was  attributed  in  the  Entente  press  and  even 
among  the  Allied  soldiers  on  Greek  soil.  King 
Constantine's  wife  is  the  sister  of  the  German 
Kaiser.  Therefore  King  Constantine  must  be 
pro-German  and  must  have  betrayed  the  Allied 
armies  in  Serbia  to  the  Germans. 

It  is  one  of  the  sad  aspects  of  war  that  other- 
wise intelligent  people  come  under  its  sinister 
influence  to  accept  reasoning  so  puerile.  King 
Constantine's  father  was  a  Dane,  who  loved  the 
French  and  hated  the  Germans  cordially.  His 
mother  is  a  Russian,  who  is  now  in  Petrograd. 
His  three  brothers  have  married  French,  Rus- 
sian, and  English  princesses,  respectively.  He 
is  cousin  of  King  George  of  England  and  of 
Nicholas  Alexandrovitch  of  Russia.  Primarily, 
he  is  a  soldier,  and  the  influence  of  any  of  his  gen- 
erals is  more  than  that  of  Queen  Sophie,  whose 
life  in  Athens  is  sadly  isolated.  Those  who  are 
in  a  position  to  know  these  things,  like  the  British 

104 


THE  FIRST  BLOCKADE 

minister  or  the  Italian  minister  to  Greece,  keep 
their  own  counsel.  A  popular  legend  is 
launched,  with  no  foundation  save  an  effort  to 
shield  those  who  have  been  guilty  of  a  blunder 
from  its  consequences.  It  grows;  it  comes  to 
create  inevitable  misunderstandings,  to  guide  the 
policy  of  nations,  to  motive  the  most  unworthy 
politics. 

One  small  thing,  however,  repeated  on  every 
occasion,  has  done  much  to  strain  relations  be- 
tween King  Constantine  and  the  Entente.  His 
word  has  been  considered  of  no  value.  There 
has  been  a  reiterated  effort  to  entrap  him  into  a 
given  position  by  devious  means.  Wlien,  on 
March  1,  1915,  he  was  willing  to  join  the  Allied 
expedition  against  Turkey,  Russia's  eleventh- 
hour  objection  to  Greek  forces  before  Constan- 
tinople and  her  proposal  that  the  Greeks  be  used 
on  the  Danube,  was  hardly  playing  the  game. 
When,  on  April  14,  1915,  Foreign  Minister  Zo- 
graphos  offered  Greece's  cooperation  with  the 
Entente,  on  terms  which  were  afterwards  slightly 
modified  and  improved  from  the  Entente  point  of 
view,  the  Allied  governments  attempted  to  as- 
sume that  by  modifying  the  conditions  of  his 

105 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

cooperation.  King  Constantine  had  abrogated 
them  entirely,  and  to  force  him  to  join  the  En- 
tente unconditionally.  When,  on  October  2, 
1915,  the  Entente  promised  to  send  150,000 
bayonets  to  Serbia  to  secure  the  active  aid  of  the 
Greeks,  they  really  sent  less  than  a  third  that 
number,  most  of  whom  arrived  too  late  to  be  of 
use.  Finally,  when  King  Constantine  had 
frankly  talked  the  situation  over  with  Lord 
Kitchener,  giving  the  British  soldier  assurances 
which  were  found  satisfactory  and  agreeing  on  a 
course  of  amicable  action  on  both  sides,  within  a 
week  of  the  British  war  minister's  departure  de- 
mands in  flat  contradiction  of  this  arrangement 
were  presented  diplomatically,  and  their  ac- 
ceptance forced  by  a  blockade  of  Greece. 

Slowly  the  conviction  was  borne  in  upon  King 
Constantine  that  the  Entente  were  never  sincere 
in  their  negotiations  with  him;  that  they  had  as- 
sumed among  themselves  obligations  in  respect 
to  the  integrity  of  Greece  which  made  it  impos- 
sible to  treat  with  them  frankly. 


106 


CHAPTER  VII 

CONSTANTINE   I   TAKES   A   STAND 

The  1915  blockade  of  Greece  was  at  its  acutest 
when  I  came  from  Saloniki  to  Athens  to  see  King 
Constantine.  The  situation  between  Greece  and 
the  Entente  had  become  so  comphcated  and  con- 
fused that  it  seemed  necessaiy  to  a  clear  under- 
standing of  it  to  go  to  the  fountain  head  for 
enlightemnent.  I  went,  therefore,  first  to  Gen- 
eral Sarrail  and  then  to  King  Constantine  and 
Premier  Skouloudis. 

At  this  moment — early  in  December,  1915 — 
the  attitude  of  Elephtherios  Venizelos  was  puz- 
zling. Following  his  dismissal  as  prime  minis- 
ter on  October  5,  he  had  made  certain  public 
declarations  which,  as  the  situation  developed, 
proved  to  be  misleading.  He  stated,  first,  that 
Greece  wished  to  remain  neutral  in  the  European 
War.  Yet  subsequent  official  statements  made 
in  the  British  House  of  Commons  revealed  that 

107 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Mr.  Venizelos  had  been  working  secretly  to  en- 
trap his  king  and  the  Greek  general  staff  in  a 
situation  which  would  force  them  to  join  the  En- 
tente, whatever  the  disadvantages  of  such  a 
course.  In  his  public  utterances  and  in  his 
formal  protest  against  the  Allied  landing  at 
Saloniki,  he  implied  that  the  disembarkment  had 
been  made  on  the  Entente's  sole  responsibility, 
contrary  to  the  volition  of  the  Government  of 
which  Mr.  Venizelos  himself  was  the  responsible 
head.  Yet  on  November  3  the  Russian  Govern- 
ment issued  an  official  communique  to  the  effect 
that  "the  Allies  have  been  invited  by  Greece  to 
send  troops  through  her  territory  to  help  her 
ally."  Finally,  he  had  maintained  that  King 
Constantine  had  violated  the  Greek  Constitution 
in  disagreeing  "twice  on  the  same  question"  with 
a  government  chosen  by  the  people.  Neverthe- 
less, in  the  Boule  on  November  3,  he  said,  "I 
admit  that  the  Crown  has  a  right  to  disagree  with 
a  responsible  government  if  he  thinks  that  the 
latter  is  not  in  accord  with  the  national  will." 
Yet  when  elections  were  called  to  ascertain 
whether  the  people  of  Greece  did  or  did  not  ac- 
cord with  his  policy  of  thrusting  Greece  into  the 

108 


CONSTANTINE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

war,  he  refused  to  take  part  in  the  elections  or  to 
permit  anj^  member  of  his  party  to  take  part  in 
them.  * 

After  dismissing  his  prime  minister  on  October 
5,  King  Constantine  stated  that  if,  in  the  elections 
of  December  21,  which  were  to  be  held  on  the 
naked  question  of  war  or  peace,  the  people  were 
once  more  to  select  Venizelos  and  his  party  to 
conduct  the  affairs  of  Greece,  he,  the  sovereign, 
would  gladly  accept  the  judgment  of  his  people 
on  a  clearly  formulated  point,  would  call  Veni- 
zelos to  power  again  and  stifle  his  objections  to 
going  to  war  under  conditions  which  he  firmly 
believed  most  hazardous.  Of  this  the  Greek 
monarch  apprised  Mr.  Venizelos  himself.  De- 
spite this  assurance,  Venizelos  remained  umnoved 
in  his  decision  not  to  tempt  a  popular  verdict  on 
liis  policy.  He  gave  as  his  reason  for  this  atti- 
tude that  he  feared  the  elections  would  not  be 
fairly  conducted;  but  as  he  had  claimed  (with 
reason)  that  on  June  13  they  had  not  been  fairly 
conducted  either,  and  yet  he  had  carried  the 
country  by  a  large  majority,  his  position  in  this 
instance  must  seem  open  to  doubt. 

The  opponents  of  Venizelos  believed  the  Cre- 
109 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

tan's  attitude  dictated  by  very  astute  political 
motives.  They  claimed  that  he  avoided  seeking 
the  judgment  of  the  electorate  on  the  question  of 
war  or  peace  since,  as  long  as  the  people  had  not 
pronounced  unequivocally  on  that  point,  he  could 
continue  to  assert  that  they  favored  war,  because 
they  had  elected  his  party  to  office  on  June  13, 
when  no  plain  question  of  war  or  peace  was  be- 
fore them.^  Venizelos's  opponents  also  main- 
tained that  in  a  choice  between  war  and  peace  the 
Greek  people  would  choose  peace.  They  eagerly 
invited  an  expression  of  popular  will  on  that 
head.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  those  who 
took  this  view  were  correct,  and  that  Venizelos 
himself  was  better  aware  of  it  than  any  one  else. 
Certainly  my  own  observation  led  me  to  the  con- 
clusion that,  while  the  sympathy  of  the  Greeks 
with  the  Entente  at  this  period  was  still  very 
marked  despite  the  intrigues  with  Bulgaria  that 
had  come  to  light,  it  was  a  purely  theoretical  sym- 
pathy which  did  not  extend  to  risking  for  the 
third  time  in  four  years  the  trials  and  hardships 
of  war.  I  am  convinced,  too,  that  the  real 
strength  of  King  Constantine  lay  and  still  lies  in 

1  In  this  connection  compare  Italian  opinion  on  the  Greek  senti- 
ment about  going  to  war.     Appendix  5. 

110 


CONSTANTINE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

the  fact  that  he  voices  more  nearly  than  any  one 
else  in  Greece  the  real  feeling  of  the  Greek  peo- 
ple, and  that,  as  this  feeling  is  not  one  in  favor 
of  war,  what  is  King  Constantine's  strength  is 
Venizelos's  weakness. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  declarations  King 
Constantine  made  through  me  on  December  4  are 
of  such  far-reaching  significance.  It  is  not  alone 
that  he  talked  with  great  earnestness,  thumping 
the  table  soundly  with  his  clenched  fist  to  em- 
phasize his  conclusions.  A  man  may  be  earnest 
and  mistaken.  What  was  most  impressive  was 
the  coolness  of  his  judgment,  the  almost  detached 
point  of  view  from  which  he  regarded  the  situa- 
tion. He  was  evidently  profoundly  convinced  of 
the  accuracy  of  his  statement  of  the  feelings  of 
the  Greek  people;  but  convinced,  not  by  enthu- 
siasm, as  is  always  the  case  with  Venizelos,  but  by 
intellectual  persuasion.  Once  in  the  course  of 
the  hour's  talk  he  broke  away  from  the  subject 
uppermost  in  his  mind  to  interject: 

"I  dare  say  you  think  I  am  pretty  cold-blooded. 
Well,  in  this  I  am  cold-blooded.  War  is  a  cold- 
blooded business.  I  know  what  war  is,  and  the 
man  who  in  war  lets  sentiment  run  away  with 

111 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

his  clear  judgment  is  lost.  The  same  is  true  even 
of  nations.  Our  situation  is  exceedingly  diffi- 
cult. We  are  between  two  fires.  If  we  want 
to  save  ourselves,  we  have  got  to  be  cold- 
blooded." 

"I  am  especially  glad,"  King  Constantine  be- 
gan the  conversation,  "to  talk  for  America,  for 
America  will  understand  Greece's  position.  We 
are  both  neutrals  together  and  determined,  if  it 
is  humanly  possible,  not  to  court  destruction  by 
permitting  ourselves  to  be  drawn  into  the  fright- 
ful vortex  of  the  present  European  conflict. 
We  are  both  trying  by  every  honorable  means 
to  guard  our  own  sovereignty,  to  protect  our  own 
people,  and  to  stand  up  for  our  own  national  in- 
terests without  sacrificing  that  neutrality  which 
we  recognize  as  our  only  salvation.  America  is 
more  protected  from  immediate  danger  by  the 
distance  which  separates  her  from  the  field  of 
battle.  We,  too,  thought  that  once ;  but  the  bat- 
tle-field shifted  and  may  shift  again,  and  what  is 
happening  in  Greece  to-day  may  happen  in 
America  or  Holland  or  any  other  neutral  country 
to-morrow,  if  the  precedent  now  sought  to  be 
established  in  the  case  of  Greece  once  be  fixed. 

112 


CONSTANTINE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

"The  fundamental  cause  of  the  entire  threaten- 
ing attitude  of  the  Entente  toward  Greece  to- 
day and  the  painful  situation  of  my  country,  is 
the    Entente's    own    assumption,    without    the 
slightest  reason  for  it,  that  Greece  is  ready  to 
betray  the  Entente  to  Germany  at  the  first  favor- 
able opportunity.     Is  it  reasonable  to  suppose 
such  a  thing?     Three  separate  times,  when  condi- 
tions have  been  advantageous,  Greece  has  ex- 
pressed her  willingness  to  join  forces  with  the 
Entente.     From  the  very  outset  of  hostilities  in 
the   near    East,    Greece's   neutrality   has   been 
stretched  to  the  utmost  to  accommodate  the  pow- 
ers of  the  Entente,  for  whom  she  has  always  felt 
the  keenest  sjanpathy  and  the  deepest  gratitude. 
The  Dardanelles  operations  were  directed  from 
Greek  islands  occupied  by  Allied  troops.     Wlien 
Serbia  was  endangered  by  a  combined  Austro- 
German   and   Bulgarian   attack.   Allied   troops 
landed  without  opposition  on  Greek  soil,  whence 
with  the  second  city  of  Greece  as  a  base,  they 
prosecuted  not  only  unmolested,  but  aided  in 
every  way  consistent  with  any  sort  of  neutrality, 
the    fruitless    and    long-delayed    campaign    to 
rescue  their  ally.     Finally,  I  myself  have  given 

113 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

my  personal  word  that  Greek  troops  will  never 
be  used  to  attack  the  French  and  British  forces 
in  Macedonia,  merely  in  order  to  allay  unjusti- 
fied suspicions.  Yet,  despite  all  these  evidences 
of  good  faith  on  the  part  of  Greece,  the  Entente 
now  demands,  in  a  form  which  is  virtually  an 
ultimatum,  that  the  Greek  troops  be  withdrawn 
from  Saloniki, — and  that  means  from  all  Mace- 
donia,— leaving  our  population  unprotected 
against  the  raids  of  Bulgarian  comitadjis  or 
against  all  the  horrors  of  war  which  have  already 
laid  Belgium  a  waste,  should  the  Allies  be  driven 
back  within  our  frontiers.  Just  suppose  the 
Germans  were  in  a  position  to  demand  of  your 
country  to  concede  the  use  of  Boston  as  the 
base  of  an  attack  on  Canada — what  would 
you  say?  And  if  all  your  military  experience 
and  the  advice  of  your  general  staff  told  you  that 
such  a  landing  was  doomed  to  failure  because 
made  with  inadequate  force,  and  you  realized  that 
British  troops  in  Canada  would  pursue  the  re- 
treating Germans  across  New  England,  destroy- 
ing as  they  went,  would  you  accept  the  prospect 
without  a  struggle?" 

"But  has  not  your  Majesty  the  German  as- 
114 


CONSTANTINE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

surance  that  the  integrity  of  Greek  territory  will 
be  respected  f  I  ventured. 

"Of  course,  and  the  Entente's  assurance,  too!" 
"And  similar  assurances  from  Bulgaria?"  I 
asked. 

"Germany  has  given  assurances  for  herself  and 
her  allies.  But  that  does  not  prevent  Germano- 
Bulgarian  armies,  as  a  measure  of  military  neces- 
sity, pursuing  the  retiring  French  and  British 
into  Greece,  fighting  in  Greece,  and  turning 
Greece  into  a  second  Poland.  I  have  that  as- 
surance also.  That  the  Greek  frontiers  be  re- 
erected  after  the  war  does  not  rebuild  our  towns 
or  compensate  my  people  for  months — perhaps 
years — spent  in  living  in  misery  as  fugitives  from 
their  own  land,  when  their  country,  which  is  not 
at  war,  has  nothing  to  gain  by  risking  devasta- 
tion. Why,  the  Entente  treats  me  as  if  I  were 
the  nigger  king  of  a  central  African  tribe  to 
whom  the  sufferings  of  my  own  people  were  a 
matter  of  indifference!  I  have  been  through 
three  wars  and  I  know  what  war  is  and  I  don't 
want  any  more  if  it  can  be  honorably  avoided. 
ISIy  people  don't  want  any  more,  either,  and  if 
they  and  I  can  help  it,  we  shall  not  have  any 

115 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

more."     The  Greek  sovereign  smote  the  desk 
with  his  fist  to  drive  in  each  sentence. 

To  clear  up  the  confusion  of  the  pohtical  situa- 
tion in  Greece,  I  put  a  question  squarely  to  the 
monarch. 

"Then  your  Majesty  does  not  beheve  that 
Venizelos's  intervention  policy  really  expressed 
the  will  of  the  Greek  people?" 

"I  know  it  did  not.  When  the  people 
reelected  Venizelos  they  elected  him,  not  his 
policy ;  the  great  mass  of  the  people  of  Greece  did 
not  and  do  not  yet  understand  anything  about 
Venizelos's  foreign  policy.  They  like  him  and 
they  elected  him,  but  it  would  be  the  maddest 
folly  to  assume  that,  because  they  voted  for  a 
man  personally  popular,  they  therefore  voted 
to  throw  the  country  into  the  whirlpool  of  a 
European  war.  They  did  no  such  thing.  War 
is  the  last  thing  they  want;  ask  them,  and  they 
will  tell  you  so.  It  is  said  that  I  have  exceeded 
the  Constitution.  What  I  have  done  is  simply  to 
apply  the  Constitution.  The  Constitution  gives 
me  the  power  to  dissolve  the  chamber  in  order  to 
prevent  just  such  disasters  as  the  following  of 
Venizelos's   policy  would  have   proved   at   this 

116 


CONSTAxNTIxNE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

juncture.  ^ly  duty  under  the  Constitution  was 
to  exercise  that  power.  I  did  exercise  it  and  I 
shall  continue  to  exercise  it  as  long  as  it  is  neces- 
sary to  save  my  people  from  destruction. 

"Another  thing  I  want  to  make  clear :  it  is  said 
that  Venizelos,  with  my  assent,  invited  the  Allied 
troops  to  come  to  Saloniki.  Nothing  could  be 
more  untrue.  Venizelos  may  have  expressed  his 
personal  opinion  that  if  the  Allied  troops  landed 
in  Saloniki,  Greece  would  not  resist — how  could 
she  resist?  But  that  Venizelos  ever,  as  the  re- 
sponsible head  of  the  Greek  Government,  for- 
mally invited  foreign  troops  to  enter  Greek  ter- 
ritory is  wholly  untrue." 

One  other  thing  I  wanted  to  know.  I  asked 
it  frankly. 

"Your  Majesty  believes  the  Allied  Balkan 
expedition  doomed  to  failure?" 

"Certainly,"  replied  the  king,  "it  is  doomed 
to  failure  if  undertaken  with  no  more  men  than 
are  there  now  or  than  are  on  their  way  there.  I 
told  Lord  Kitchener  so,  and  he  agreed  with  me. 
Great  Britain  does  not  seem  disposed  to  send  an 
adequate  force,  and  France  cannot  do  the  job 
alone.     The  minimum  army  that  can  hope  to 

117 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

accomplish  anything  in  the  Balkans  is  four  hun- 
dred thousand  men.  As  that  number  is  not  be- 
ing sent,  that  is  my  proof  that  it  is  Greece  who 
must  suffer  and  Greece  who  must  pay  for  the 
failure  of  the  Allied  Balkan  venture.  If  the 
Entente  will  assure  me  that  when  they  are  driven 
back  into  Greek  territory  they  will  consider  the 
Balkan  game  up  and  that  they  will  reembark  and 
leave  Greece,  I  shall  guarantee  with  my  whole 
army  to  protect  their  retreat  against  Germans, 
Bulgarians,  or  anybody  else,  and  give  them  time 
to  embark  without  any  danger.  Then  I  would 
be  legitimately  protecting  my  frontiers,  and  it 
would  not  involve  Greece  in  any  further  risks. 
More  I  cannot  do.  The  Entente  demand  too 
much.  They  are  trying  to  drive  Greece  out  of 
neutrality;  they  come  into  Greek  territorial 
waters  as  if  they  were  theirs;  at  Nauplia  they 
destroy  tanks  of  petroleum,  intended  for  the  ex- 
termination of  locusts,  on  the  excuse  that  they 
may  be  used  by  German  submarines;  they  stop 
Greek  ships,  as  they  have  done  with  American 
ships,  too;  they  ruin  Greek  commerce;  they  want 
to  seize  our  railways ;  and  now  they  demand  that 
I  take  away  my  troops  which  guard  the  Greek 

118 


CONSTANTINE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

frontiers,  leaving  my  country  open  to  invasion  or 
to  any  lawless  incursion.  I  will  not  do  it,"  he 
almost  shouted,  striking  the  table  with  his  fist  so 
that  the  ink-pot  jumped.  "I  am  willing  to  dis- 
cuss any  fair  proposals;  but  two  things  I  will 
not  concede :  Greece  will  maintain  her  sovereignty 
and  her  sovereign  right  to  protect  herself  at 
need." 

"And  if  that  is  not  satisfactory — if  coercive 
measures  are  used  by  the  Entente?"  I  ventured. 

"We  shall  protest  to  the  whole  world  that  our 
sovereign  rights  are  violated.  We  shall  resist 
passively,  as  long  as  we  humanly  can,  being 
forced  by  any  measures  whatsoever  into  a  course 
which  we  know  will  be  prejudicial  to  the  liberties 
and  happiness  of  our  people." 

"And  when  you  can't  hold  out  any  longer?"  I 
asked. 

King  Constantine  sat  silent  for  a  space.  Two 
or  three  times  he  flung  his  whole  body  forward 
as  if  to  say  something  startling,  but  seemed  to 
think  better  of  it.  Finally,  that  sense  of  humor, 
which  is  his  most  striking  characteristic,  came  to 
the  top.  He  smiled,  rather  gi'imly.  With  a 
quick  shrug  of  his  shoulders,  he  rephed  as  if  he 

119 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

v^ere  brushing  aside  a  question,  not  answering  it. 

"We  shall  have  to  demobilize  our  armies  and 
await  the  march  of  events.  What  else  can  we 
do?"  he  said. 

Absolutely  frank  and  plain-spoken,  as  Con- 
stantine  of  Greece  is  always  frank  and  plain- 
spoken,  his  statement  threw  the  Entente  govern- 
ments into  consternation.  The  veil  of  intrigue, 
politics,  bargaining,  and  pretense  was  suddenly 
rent.  Hating  diplomacy,  King  Constantine 
spoke  the  truth;  and  the  truth  embarrassed  the 
Entente  diplomatists  greatly. 

Two  days  later  I  sought  Premier  Skouloudis. 
Of  him  I  asked  also  a  statement  of  the  situation. 
Mr.  H.  Charles  Woods  speaks  of  the  former 
Constantinople  banker  as  "one  of  the  best  in- 
formed men  in  the  Balkan  peninsula."  He  did 
not  strike  me  so.  In  sharp  contrast  with  his 
sovereign,  he  gave  an  immediate  impression  of 
being  too  clever  by  half,  of  unpleasant  wiliness. 
His  declaration,  however,  in  this  instance  was 
straightforward,  which  was  not  always  the  case 
with  his  public  statements. 

"Please  tell  the  American  people,"  he  said, 
"that  the  Government  of  Greece  has  only  two 

120 


CONSTANTIXE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

aims :  to  safeguard  the  sovereignty  of  Greece  and 
not  to  leave  neutrality,  no  matter  by  what  reason 
we  may  be  constrained  to  do  so,  or  no  matter  what 
inducements  or  pressions  may  be  brought  to  bear. 
I  think  I  may  say  that  tlie  air  which  has  been 
surcharged  by  misunderstandings  for  the  past 
month  is  at  last  clearing.  The  Entente  begins 
to  understand  that,  while  we  are  immovable  on 
the  two  heads  just  stated,  we  are  disposed  in 
every  other  respect  to  give  a  material  expression 
of  the  gratitude  that  every  Greek  feels  toward 
France,  Great  Britain,  and  Russia,  that  dates 
from  Navarino.  Two  points  which  have  been  a 
cause  of  recent  friction  are  now  in  the  way  of 
amicable  settlement.  As  far  back  as  November 
10,  I  suggested  the  inappropriateness  of  diplo- 
matists who  are  not  soldiers  seeking  to  arrange 
the  details  of  a  situation,  essentially  military,  of 
which  they  understood  very  little.  I,  therefore, 
proposed  a  conference  composed  of  military  ex- 
perts on  either  side  who  should  be  authorized  to 
study  the  necessities  of  the  situation  and  to  re- 
port thereon,  giving  the  Government  and  the 
Entente  diplomatists  the  benefit  of  their  conclu- 
sions  from   which   a   settlement   could   then   be 

121 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

reached.  To-day,  finally,  this  proposition  is  ac- 
cepted ;  Colonel  Pallis  of  the  general  staiF  leaves 
for  Saloniki  to  consult  General  Sarrail  to  this 
end.  Respecting  the  railroads,  the  Government 
has  never  been  unaware  that  the  personnel  is  in- 
adequate to  handling  the  immense  increase  of 
traffic  due  to  the  military  uses  to  which  the  rail- 
ways are  now  put,  but  naturally  we  did  not  wish 
to  surrender  control  of  our  own  property;  as  Sar- 
rail offers  to  assist  in  the  operation  of  the  rail- 
ways, leaving  Greek  control  unquestioned,  our 
Government  is  only  too  glad  to  accept." 

"What  about  hunting  down  Austro-G^rman 
submarines  in  Greek  territorial  waters?"  I  asked. 

"That  touches  our  sovereignty,"  replied  the 
premier.  "We  protest  to  the  world,  especially 
to  America,  who  is  also  neutral,  that  we  cannot 
sanction  violations  of  our  territory ;  but  what  can 
we  do?  We  have  only  a  small  navy  and  a  vast 
coast-line.     We  can  only  protest. 

"Wliat  we  want  to  avoid — what  we  shall  avoid 
— is  associating  Greece  in  the  uncertain  outcome 
of  the  war.  Had  we  joined  the  Allies  last  spring 
when  we  were  urged  to  do  so,  to-day  we  should 
have  to  bear  the  bulk  of  the  cost  of  the  failure  of 

122 


CONSTANTINE  I  TAKES  A  STAND 

the  Gallipoli  venture.  Had  we  joined  at  the  in- 
ception of  the  recent  Austro-German  and  Bul- 
garian attack  on  Serbia,  we  should  now  be  bear- 
ing a  large  part  of  the  price  in  blood  and 
devastation  which  followed  the  crushing  of  Ser- 
bia. By  following  the  two  principles  I  have 
stated  as  governing  Greece's  foreign  policy,  we 
have  been  saved  these  two  disasters.  We  shall 
continue  to  follow  them,  for  there  is  our  only 
salvation." 

In  these  two  public  declarations  by  the  king 
and  the  prime  minister  of  Greece  the  "i's"  of  the 
Entente  policy  in  the  near  East  had  been  dotted. 
A  franker  statement  by  the  Entente  than  any 
heretofore  given  of  their  intentions  in  the  Balkans 
became  imperative.  On  December  8  the  French 
minister  to  Greece,  M.  Guillemin,  gave  me  such 
a  declaration. 

"It  is  self-evident,"  he  said,  among  other 
things,  "that  where  the  prestige  of  the  Allied 
forces  and  the  moral  effect  upon  our  enemies  of 
keeping  a  threatening  base  in  the  Balkans  are 
both  involved  in  the  retention  of  Saloniki,  our 
withdrawal  now  would  serve  no  purpose." 

Lord  Kitchener  and  the  military  authorities  of 
123 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

the  Entente  had  lost.  Mr.  Venizelos  and  the 
Entente  diplomatists  had  won.  The  policy  of 
treating  the  Balkans  as  a  political  instead  of  a 
military  question  had  received  official  sanction. 


124 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WHEELS   WITHIN   WHEELS 

Whatever  the  official  protestations  of  the 
Entente  governments  and  their  ministers  in 
Athens  that  it  was  "not  the  intention  of  the 
Alhed  powers  to  constrain  Greece  to  abandon 
her  neutrahty,"  as  the  British  communique  of 
November  19,  1915,  stated,  there  has  been  very 
plainly  no  other  aim  to  Allied  diplomacy  in  the 
near  East  from  the  moment  Turkey  joined  the 
Central  empires.  Bulgaria's  disaffection  only 
sharpened  this  purpose.  Not  only  was  the  pres- 
tige of  the  Entente  at  stake,  but  the  personal 
ambitions  of  the  Allied  ministers  in  Athens  had 
been  badly  set  back  by  their  failure  to  secure  this 
end.  At  Downing  Street  and  the  Quai  d'Orsay 
it  was  a  matter  of  indifference  what  means  were 
employed,  so  that  the  desired  results  were 
achieved.  The  French  and  British  ministers, 
therefore,  especially  INI.  Guillemin,  the  former, 
were  on   their  mettle.     As   I   look   through   a 

125 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

number  of  his  letters,  the  personal  element  looms 
far  larger  than  anything  else  in  his  point  of  view. 
An  exceedingly  nervous  man,  overconfident  of 
success  from  his  arrival,  impatient  of  contrarie- 
ties, he  inclined  to  take  the  Entente  failures  in 
the  near  East  as  shafts  directed  at  him,  individu- 
ally. Never  for  a  single  moment  did  he  recog- 
nize the  Greeks'  view  of  their  own  situation.  He 
was  rarely  in  contact  with  any  Greeks  save  the 
followers  of  Venizelos,  and  governed  his  policy 
solely  upon  the  assumption  that  Venizelos  alone 
did,  or  ever  could,  represent  the  true  opinion  of 
the  Greek  people.  Countless  straws  indicating 
to  the  observant  a  veering  of  Greek  sentiment 
from  unqualified  support  of  the  Entente,  passed 
him  unremarked. 

The  obligation  of  Greece  to  France  for  the  aid 
of  the  French  fleet  in  the  Greek  War  of  Inde- 
pendence seemed  to  be  the  principal  lever 
France  counted  upon  to  move  Greece  to  co- 
operation in  the  present  war.  Her  diplomacy 
was  that  of  a  bill  collector  trying  to  collect  the 
debt  of  Navarino.  Ignoring  the  history  of 
Greece  during  three  thousand  years,  the  French, 
who  directed  the  Entente  policy  in  the  near  East 

126 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

from  the  date  of  England's  failure  with  Bulgaria, 
staked  all  on  an  appeal  to  the  sentimentahty  of 
the  Greeks,  not  to  their  practical  sense.  Venize- 
los  was  the  Entente's  man.  A  sentimentalist 
himself,  he  was  wiUing  to  fling  Greece  into  the 
vortex  at  any  moment,  on  no  conditions.  The 
Entente  view,  therefore,  was.  Why  treat  with  any 
one  in  Greece  save  Venizelos?  Their  plan,  to  aid 
or  at  need  to  force  Venizelos  back  into  power 
and  then  to  collect  the  aid  of  Greece  as  one  would 
collect  a  note  overdue.  All  the  Entente  eggs 
were  in  the  Venizelos  basket. 

In  this  the  Italian  and  Russian  ministers  dif- 
fered from  their  French  and  British  colleagues.' 
By  far  the  ablest  of  the  Entente  diplomatists  in 
the  near  East,  Count  Bosdari  and  Prince  Demi- 
doff  followed  the  trend  of  events  in  the  Balkans 
carefully  and  were  at  once  alive  to  the  gradually 
shifting  sentiment  of  the  Greek  people  in  respect 
of  the  Entente.  Neither  had  the  slightest  faith 
in  Venizelos ;  both  realized  fully  that  the  Cretan 
was  playing  his  own  political  game  in  Greece 
with  Entente  backing  and  at  Entente  expense. 
"We  need  soldiers,  not  office-holders,"  was  the 

1  For  Italian  opinion  on  the  Allied  policy  in  Greece,  see  Ap- 
pendix 5, 

127 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

succinct  expression  of  Italian  and  Russian  diplo- 
macy in  Greece. 

There  were  other  and  far  subtler  reasons  for 
this  division  in  the  diplomatic  ranks  of  the  En- 
tente— a  division  of  which  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment was  probably  better  aware  than  the  Allied 
governments,  themselves.  The  British  seizure 
of  the  disputed  islands  of  Imbros  and  Tenedos 
and  the  Greek  island  of  Lemnos  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Dardanelles,  on  the  eve  of  Venizelos's  resig- 
nation in  March,  1915 — and  with  his  tacit  con- 
sent— was  destined  to  play  a  far  larger  role  in 
world  affairs  than  any  other  one  incident  of  the 
war  in  the  Balkan  field.  Indeed,  it  was  the 
moving  cause  of  the  Russian  Revolution. 

Just  before  Great  Britain's  seizure  of  these 
islands,  Russia  had  vetoed  the  participation  of 
King  Constantine's  army  in  the  attack  upon 
Constantinople.  The  moment  Great  Britain 
took  possession  of  Imbros,  Tenedos,  and  Lem- 
nos, Russian  diplomacy  changed.  Previously, 
she  had  opposed  Greece's  entry  into  the  war, 
unwilling  to  set  up  a  rival  claimant,  operat- 
ing from  a  nearer  base,  upon  the  territory  of  a 
dismembered  Ottoman  Empire.     But  the  three 

128 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

Greek  islands  are  so  placed  that  they  can,  if 
fortified,  readily  close  the  mouth  of  the  Dar- 
danelles and  effectively  shut  Constantinople  off 
from  the  jNIediterranean.^  In  British  hands,  they 
constitute  a  key  to  Constantinople  in  English 
pockets.  In  the  hands  of  weaker,  poverty- 
stricken  Greece,  bound  to  Russia  by  ties  of 
church  and  royal  family,  the  three  islands  would 
be  only  a  very  remote  menace,  if  any,  to  Russia's 
door  upon  the  Southern  seas. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  Great  Britain's  occu- 
pation of  the  three  islands  was  in  good  faith, 
for  merely  temporary  use  in  military  operations 
against  the  Dardanelles,  and  that  they  would 
be  returned  to  Greece  or  surrendered  to  Russia 
after  the  war.  But  the  imperial  Russian  Gov- 
ernment had  misgivings  on  that  head,  and 
scarcely  had  Great  Britain  taken  possession  of 
the  islands  in  question,  than  Russia  withdrew 
her  opposition  to  Greece's  participation  in  the 
war.  It  was  furthest  from  Russia's  intentions, 
however,  to  support  the  cooperation  of  Greece 
offered  by  Mr.  Venizelos — that  on  no  conditions ; 

1  So  near  is  Imbros  to  the  Dardanelles  that  a  number  of  us 
were  able  to  follow  the  Allied  operations  at  the  Dardanelles 
from  the  hills  of  the  island  with  ease. 

129 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

if  the  Entente  was  successful,  Venizelos  was  ca- 
pable of  ceding  the  comparatively  uninhabited 
Imbros,  Tenedos,  and  Lemnos  to  Great  Britain 
in  return  for  territories  in  Thrace,  Albania,  or 
Asia  Minor  where  he  could  assure  himself  of  an 
appreciable  number  of  votes  for  his  indefinite 
continuance  in  office  as  prime  minister  of  Greece. 
King  Constantine,  on  the  other  hand,  had  main- 
tained from  the  very  first — and  maintains  still — 
that  the  indisputable  condition  of  Greece's  par- 
ticipation in  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies 
must  be  a  written  Entente  guarantee  of  the  in- 
tegrity of  Greece,  including  the  disputed  islands. 
Russia,  therefore,  from  the  hour  of  Great  Brit- 
ain's seizure  of  the  three  islands,  adopted  a  pro- 
Greek  diplomacy  centered  upon  the  support  of 
King  Constantine,  not  of  Venizelos,  as  the  sole 
means  of  saving  the  gates  of  Constantinople 
from  the  command  of  British  guns. 

The  Italian  motives  were  other,  but  the  result 
identical.  Nearer  the  field  of  diplomatic  action, 
better  acquainted  with  Greek  psychology  than 
any  of  the  Entente  powers,  with  a  greater  stake 
in  the  game  perhaps  even  than  Russia,  and  rep- 
resented in  Greece  by  an  astute  and  accomplished 

130 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

diplomatist,  the  policy  of  Italy  was  far  more 
openly  and  vigorously  pro-Greek  than  that  of 
Russia.  The  Italians  also  favored  King  Con- 
stantine,  not  Venizelos.  For  Venizelos  dreamed 
a  greater  Greece — a  Greece  absorbing  the  bulk 
of  Asia  Minor,  extending  from  Kaz  Dagh  on  the 
Gulf  of  Adramit  at  the  north,  indefinitely  south- 
ward. Now  the  Italian  ambitions  centered  first 
in  the  Dodecanese  Islands — also  Greek — of 
which  Rhodes  had  been  occupied  in  1912,  during 
the  Tripolitan  AVar ;  and  then  in  the  neighboring 
Lycian  coast  of  Asia  JNIinor,  northward,  in  pos- 
sible conflict  with  Venizelos's  vision  of  a  still 
greater  Greece. 

It  is  tnie,  Venizelos  had  no  pledge  from  the 
Entente  that  his  schemes  would  ever  be  realized, 
even  were  Greece  to  join  the  Allies.  But  he  had 
the  pledge  of  interest:  a  greater  Greece  divided 
into  a  hundred  islands  and  separated  from  half 
her  possessions  by  the  ^gean  Sea,  bankrupt  and 
with  no  considerable  navy,  would  be  slight 
menace  to  British  or  French  command  of  the 
Eastern  Mediterranean.  A  strong  Italy,  am- 
bitious, prosperous,  and  with  a  fleet  carefully 
conserved  to  that  end  during  the  present  war, 

131 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

would  compete  actively  with  France  and  Eng- 
land for  control  of  the  whole  Mediterranean  and 
preference  in  the  markets  of  the  near  East.  The 
desire  of  Venizelos  to  erect  Greece  into  a  big, 
loose,  feeble  empire,  without  strength  and  under 
his  absolute  control,  appealed  to  French  and 
British  statesmen  as  an  easy  counterfoil  to  Italy's 
pretensions.  King  Constantine's  declared  inten- 
tion to  retain  and  consolidate  the  lesser  empire 
his  sword  had  won  in  1912  and  1913  appealed  to 
the  Italians  as  apt  to  leave  them  a  freer  hand  in 
Asia  Minor. 

Other  still  more  practical  considerations  also 
moved  Italy.  A  powerful  Italy  after  the  war 
must  depend  upon  a  maximum  conservation  of 
the  Italian  armed  strength  during  the  war. 
Should  King  Constantine's  army  not  be  joined  to 
the  Entente  forces  in  the  Balkans,  her  Allies 
were  certain  to  call  upon  Italy  to  make  up  the 
deficit.  Eveiy  Italian  familiar  with  the  situa- 
tion in  Greece — and  few  Italian  statesmen  or 
journalists  are  not — was  well  aware  that  Veni- 
zelos was  in  no  position  to  furnish  an  army 
worthy  of  the  name  to  be  added  to  the  Entente 
forces  in  Macedonia.     An  Entente  support  of 

132 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

Venizelos  was  bound  to  mean  ultimately,  there- 
fore, a  call  upon  Italy  to  send  a  hundred  or  so 
thousand  men  to  Saloniki  to  take  the  place  of  the 
soldiers  Venizelos  could  not  supply  without  King 
Constantine's  cooperation  as  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  Greek  army. 

Clearer  headed  than  his  other  colleagues, 
Count  Bosdari,  the  Italian  minister  to  Greece, 
was  never  for  a  moment  taken  in  by  Venizelos. 
He  regarded  the  Cretan  as  a  very  wily  politician 
seeking  to  profit  by  the  Entente's  need,  to  bul- 
wark himself  and  his  henchmen  in  control  of 
Greece  for  years  to  come.  That  Venizelos  would 
ever  be  of  any  real  utility  to  the  Allies  did  not 
appear  to  Count  Bosdari  as  at  all  likely.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  saw  from  the  first  that  King 
Constantine's  army  could  readily  be  secured  to 
the  Entente  by  a  frank  policy  definitely  eschew- 
ing interference  in  the  internal  politics  of  Greece 
and  guaranteeing  to  Greece  what  was  riglitfully 
hers.  The  Italians,  therefore,  espoused  this 
policy  from  the  beginning  and  continued  it,  even 
in  conflict  with  their  own  Allies,  until  the  end 
of  1916. 

Holding  both  doors  to  the  JNIediterranean,  at 
133 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Gibraltar  and  Egypt,  dominating  the  central 
Mediterranean  from  Malta,  and  in  possession  of 
the  keys  to  the  Black  Sea  by  her  occupation  of 
Imbros,  Tenedos,  and  Lemnos,  Great  Britain 
was  satisfied  with  her  position  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Not  so  France.  The  ItaHan  plans  of 
territorial  expansion  filled  French  statesmen 
with  misgivings.  The  French  control  of  Medi- 
terranean trade  seemed  threatened.  Greece,  al- 
ways devotedly  French  in  ideals  and  associations, 
was  proving  recalcitrant.  The  whole  situation 
in  the  near  East  was  ground  slipping  from  under 
the  feet  of  the  French. 

The  expedition  to  Saloniki  had  been  under- 
taken partly  for  reasons  of  internal  politics  in 
France  and  partly  to  strengthen  France's  pres- 
tige in  the  Balkans.  Its  failure  had  greatly 
weakened  French  prestige  in  the  whole  near 
East.  The  failure  must  be  retrieved.  Like  a 
gambler  who  continues  to  stake  against  a  win- 
ning bank,  the  French  insisted  stubbornly  that 
they  must  win  in  the  end  in  Greece.  Like  a 
gambler,  too,  their  capital  of  affection  and  re- 
spect among  the  Greeks  disappeared  with  amaz- 
ing rapidity  with  each  new,  desperate  effort  to 

134 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

regain  what  had  been  lost.  "A  poHcy  of  panic," 
as  King  Constantine  put  it. 

How  official  the  conception  was,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  state;  but  that  it  was  widespread  among 
the  French  in  JNIacedonia  is  indisputable.  When 
the  Greeks  would  not  be  "cajoled  or  coerced" 
out  of  neutrality,  a  plan  of  the  conquest  of  Greece 
was  born  among  the  French  in  Saloniki  or 
Athens  and  spread  despite  outward  official  dis- 
couragement. General  Sarr ail's  armies  were  ac- 
complishing nothing  in  Macedonia.  Should  they 
descend  upon  Greece  through  Thessaly,  ostens- 
ibly to  rescue  the  Greek  people  from  a  "pro-Ger- 
man tyrant,"  two  ends  would  be  served.  Sarrail 
and  his  forces  would  be  extricated  from  a  difficult 
military  position  without  an  acknowledgment  of 
error  or  defeat,  and  the  lost  French  influence  in 
Greece  would  be  regained — by  force,  it  is  true. 
Venizelos  could  be  established  as  a  dictator  and 
a  sort  of  pro-consul  of  France  in  the  near  East. 
A  republic  could  be  erected  under  the  French  aegis, 
which  would  in  reality  be  a  French  protectorate. 

The  idea  was  alluring.  I  have  heard  it 
warmly  supported  by  men  of  intelligence  and  po- 
litical influence  in  France.     Departing  from  two 

135 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

assumptions :  first,  that  King  Constantine  is  pro- 
German  and  therefore  an  enemy  of  France ;  and, 
second,  that  the  Greek  people  desire  passionately 
to  join  the  Allies  and  are  restrained  from  such 
a  course  only  by  the  usurped  power  in  the  hands 
of  their  sovereign,  a  certain  moral  color  could  be 
given  to  the  plan — the  democratizing  of  an 
oppressed  people,  for  example.  Possibly  it  was 
for  this  reason  that  General  Sarrail  worked  so 
actively  in  conjunction  with  the  Venizelists  to  in- 
timidate the  voters  of  Macedonia  into  support- 
ing the  Cretan  in  the  elections  scheduled  to  take 
place  in  September,  1916,  but,  at  Venizelos's  own 
request,  never  held.  The  activity  of  Sarrail  in 
Venizelos's  campaign  became  generally  known 
throughout  Greece,  where  it  worked  rather 
against  than  in  favor  of  the  Cretan.  The  Greeks 
are  suspicious  and  intolerant  of  foreign  inter- 
ference in  their  internal  politics. 

That  General  Sarrail  did  interfere  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  On  August  10,  1916,  Pamicos  Zym- 
brakakis,  now  a  member  of  the  revolutionary 
government,  wrote  Venizelos,  then  in  Athens,  of 
"a  collaboration  with  the  Entente  powers  and 
particularly  with   France  who,   at  the  psycho- 

136 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

logical   moment,   taking   the   initiative   through 
Sarrail,  will  lend  us  her  assistance  by  an  immedi- 
ate consolidation  of  the  new  order  of  things" ;  and 
referred  at  even  so  early  a  date  to  a  plan  then 
germinating  for  a  revolution  against  the  consti- 
tutional government,  backed  by  the  bayonets  of 
General  Sarrail.     Zymbrakakis  further  refers  to 
Sarrail's  feeling  of  "hatred  against  the  crown" 
and  asserts  that  the  French  commander  "is  of 
opinion  that  he  will  gladly  participate  in  a  plot 
the  plans  of  which  you   [Venizelos]   will  lay." 
^Ir.  Eliakis,  one  of  Venizelos's  leading  support- 
ers and  electoral  workers,  wrote  the  Cretan  from 
Cozani  on  August  3,  1916:  "Sarrail's  aide-de- 
camp, ^lathieu  ^  .  .  .  told  me  to  arrange  with 
him  through  the  consul,  all  affairs  relating  to  the 
elections.     They   intend  first  of  all  to  employ 
Cretan    police    to    terrorize    the    Mussulmans." 
]Mr.    P.   Arguyeropoulos,   of  the   revolutionary 
government,    an   ex-prefect    of    Saloniki    under 
Venizelos,  added  his  testimony  to  the  electoral 
services  of  the  French  commander  in  another  let- 
ter to  his  chief.     "General  Sarrail,  it  appears," 
he  writes,  "has  finally  appreciated  the  necessity 

1  Vide  supra. 

137 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  close  collaboration  with  us.  Every  day  under 
my  direction  he  takes  measures  useful  to  our  in- 
terests." These  letters,  with  many  others  found 
among  the  papers  left  by  Mr.  Venizelos  when  he 
fled  from  Athens,  September  25,  1916,  have  all 
been  published.  I  have  seen  the  originals  and 
many  more  such  documents  proving  beyond  any 
question  the  work  of  certain  French  officials  in 
cooperation  with  the  Venizelists,  not  alone  in  the 
Cretan's  electoral  campaign,  but  in  his  subsequent 
attempt  to  overthrow  the  constitutional  govern- 
ment of  Greece. 

It  was  through  these  rocks  and  shoals  of  in- 
trigue that  each  of  the  successive  cabinets  of  the 
constitutional  Government  of  Greece  have  been 
called  to  steer  their  ship  of  state  since  March, 
1915,  That  they  have  succeeded  in  avoiding  the 
threatening  dangers  is  not  so  much  the  miracle  as 
that  they  have  succeeded  in  divining  them.  Yet 
every  man  in  Greece  has  been  as  aware  of  each 
phase  of  this  comphcated  puzzle  of  diplomacy 
and  counter-diplomacy  as  the  Entente  ministers 
themselves,  and  far  better  informed  thereon  than 
the  governments  or  people  of  the  Entente  coun- 
tries, who  have  been  given  only  one-sided  reports 

138 


WHEELS  WITHIN  WHEELS 

by  their  diplomatic  representatives  in  Athens, 
and  only  censored  reports  in  their  press.  In 
Greece,  however,  while  the  Venizelist  newspapers 
were  seeking  to  implant  the  legend  of  King  Con- 
stantine's  pro-Germanism  and  to  persuade  the 
people  that  their  only  salvation  from  absolutism 
was  to  throw  themselves  into  the  arms  of  the  En- 
tente— and  of  Venizelos — the  opposition  press 
was  as  busy  explaining  the  interest  of  Russia  in 
supporting  Venizelos  against  the  king  and  the 
interest  of  Italy  in  opposing  France's  imperial- 
ism in  the  near  East  to  the  profit  of  her  own 
ambitions. 

The  Greek,  to  the  humblest  bootblack  who 
reads  his  paper  propped  up  against  his  box  as 
he  cleans  your  shoes,  was  constrained  to  buy  no 
pig  in  a  poke.  All  there  was  to  know  of  the  mo- 
tives of  the  Entente,  of  King  Constantine,  of 
Venizelos,  he  knew.  His  choice  was  free.  And 
when,  on  December  first,  at  the  first  signal  of  the 
revolution  of  which  Venizelos  had,  in  Zymbra- 
kakis's  phrase,  "laid  the  plans,"  he  chose  his  king 
and  his  country  and  rejected  Venizelos  and  the 
Entente,  who  shall  say  that  his  choice  was  not  that 
of  a  free  man,  exercising  an  inalienable  right? 

139 


PART  II 
COERCION 


CHAPTER  IX 

ENCROACHMENTS 

The  first  blockade,  begun  on  November  17, 
ended  in  the  unconditional  capitulation  of  the 
Greek  Government  on  December  11.  The 
Greek  troops,  save  a  guard  sufficient  to  maintain 
order,  were  to  evacuate  Saloniki,  and  a  consider- 
able proportion  of  them  were  to  be  released  from 
active  service  and  sent  to  their  homes.  The  rail- 
way from  Saloniki  into  Serbia  was  turned  over 
to  the  French.  Allied  trawlers,  mine  layers,  and 
destroyers  in  search  of  submarine  bases  cruised 
unmolested  in  Greek  waters  as  if  no  provision  of 
international  law  required  a  belligerent  vessel 
to  quit  neutral  waters  within  a  fixed  period. 

The  importance  of  the  evacuation  of  Saloniki 
was  much  greater  than  appeared  on  the  surface. 
Morally,  Saloniki  represented  to  the  Greeks  the 
fruit  of  their  two  victorious  wars  against  Turks 
and   Bulgars.     To   deliver   the   second   city   of 

143 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Greece  into  the  hands  even  of  friends  was 
a  great  blow  to  their  pride  and  their  national 
spirit.  Like  the  Entente  note  of  August  3, 
1915,  ceding  Cavalla  to  Bulgaria,  the  Entente 
memorandum  of  November  25  left  a  distinct  feel- 
ing of  resentment  among  the  Greeks,  whose  mil- 
itary cooperation  the  Entente  were  still  seeking 
to  secure.  From  a  practical  standpoint,  the 
evacuation  was  still  more  significant.  Saloniki 
is  the  central  point  of  mobilization  and  the  sup- 
ply base  for  the  whole  Greek  army  concentrated 
in  Macedonia.  With  its  evacuation,  the  Greek 
troops  were  divided  into  two  unconnected  forces, 
one  to  the  east  of  Saloniki,  with  the  inadequate 
open  roadstead  of  Cavalla  as  a  port;  the  other  to 
the  west,  with  Vodena  as  a  center,  supplies  being 
sent  overland  through  Thessaly.  It  is  important 
to  realize  that  neither  of  these  dispositions  of 
troops  was  or  could  be  practical  from  a  military 
point  of  view.  In  both  instances,  transport  was 
extremely  difficult,  the  long  retention  of  any  con- 
siderable force  impossible.  In  a  word,  the  En- 
tente requirements  necessitated,  sooner  or  later, 
the  complete  evacuation  of  Macedonia  by  the 
Greek  army.     It  was  precisely  for  this  reason 

144 


ENCROACHMENTS 

that   the   Greek   staff   opposed   so    strenuously 
the  acceptance  of  the  AUied  demands. 

It  should  be  added  also  that  the  presence  of 
the  Greek  army  on  either  wing  of  the  Allied 
forces  constituted  virtually  their  sole  protection 
from  a  flank  attack  by  the  Bulgarians,  concen- 
trated in  Macedonia  from  the  conclusion  of  the 
French  retreat  from  Serbia  on  December  15  until 
General  Sarrail  had  completed  the  fortification 
of  Saloniki  as  an  entrenched  camp.  In  their  new 
exposed  positions  on  the  two  wings  of  the  Allied 
forces,  the  Greeks  were  in  direct  contact  with  the 
prospective  invaders  of  their  soil.  At  the  same 
time  their  communications,  from  one  wing  to  the 
other  and  between  both  wings  and  headquarters 
at  Athens,  were  so  destroyed  by  the  enforced 
evacuation  of  their  local  base  that  they  were 
necessarily  at  a  very  distinct  disadvantage  for  de- 
fense of  their  frontiers  from  any  invasion  that 
might  be  attempted.  In  a  word,  they  were 
thrust  by  the  Allies  into  a  precarious  position  of 
which  General  Sarrail  held  the  key,  with  the  hope 
that  an  overt  act  on  the  part  of  the  forces  of  the 
Central  empires  would  compel  them  not  only  to 
war  with  Bulgaria,  but  to  enter  upon  hostilities 

145 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

under  the  supreme  command  of  General  Sarrail, 
who  controlled  their  only  means  of  waging  war 
successfully. 

On  December  19  the  Greek  elections  were 
held.  As  the  Venizelists  did  not  participate,  the 
ballot  was  extremely  light — a  fact  which  the  En- 
tente press  hailed  as  indicative  that  Venizelos  still 
controlled  the  country,  since  his  opponents  polled 
only  a  negligible  percentage  of  possible  votes. 
The  army,  however,  was  mobilized  and  therefore 
the  bulk  of  the  voters  of  the  country  were  legally 
deprived  of  their  franchise.  As  the  sole  contest 
was  between  factions  of  those  unanimous  in  op- 
posing Venizelos  and  his  war  policy,  there  was  no 
particular  reason  for  a  heavy  vote.  Mr.  Veni- 
zelos's  manoeuver  in  abstaining  from  elections 
which  he  had  forced  upon  the  country  success- 
fully prevented  any  expression  of  popular  will 
against  war.  Mr.  Venizelos,  therefore,  as  well 
as  the  Entente  powers,  claimed  that  the  people 
of  Greece  favored  war  and  desired  Venizelos 
himself  to  guide  their  country  into  hostilities  on 
the  side  of  the  Allies.  The  propriety  of  reach- 
ing a  positive  conclusion  of  vital  importance 
upon  negative  reasoning  of  this  sort  is  open  to 

146 


ENCROACHMENTS 

question.  It  is  significant  as  illustrating  the 
growing  unsoundness  of  the  position  of  the  En- 
tente in  active  support  of  their  champion,  Veni- 
zelos,  and  the  illogical  lengths  to  which  an  unsuc- 
cessful diplomatic  pohcy  in  the  Balkans  was  lead- 
ing Allied  statesmen. 

The  day  following  the  election  the  Greek  evac- 
uation of  Saloniki  began.  General  de  Castelnau, 
chief  of  the  French  general  staff,  arrived  in 
jNIacedonia  to  study  the  military  situation  of  the 
Allied  Orient  armies.  Later,  on  December  26, 
he  visited  Athens  and  talked  at  length  with  King 
Constantine.  As  in  the  case  of  Lord  Kitchener, 
there  was  complete  understanding  between  the 
two  soldiers.  General  de  Castelnau  told  me  that 
he  found  the  Greek  sovereign  cordially  disposed 
to  do  all  in  his  power  to  be  of  aid  to  the  Allies, 
short  of  actual  war.  Constantine  I  expressed 
quite  frankly  to  the  French  commander  his  doubt 
of  the  ability  of  the  Allies  to  conquer  the  Central 
empires  by  force;  but  stated  that  he  thought  a 
definite  conclusion  of  the  war  in  the  Allies'  favor 
possible  through  a  long  economic  and  financial 
pressure.  The  Greek  monarch  asked  General  de 
Castelnau  point-blank  why  the  dilatory  tactics  of 

147 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

the  Entente  governments  had  permitted  the  fail- 
ure of  the  Dardanelles  enterprise  and  the  Serbian 
disaster. 

"No  one  denies  that  these  unfortunate  results 
are  most  regrettable,"  General  de  Castelnau  re- 
plied. "It  were  very  much  to  be  desired  that 
Belgium,  Serbia,  and  JNIontenegi'o  were  still  intact 
and  that  to-day  Russia  could  be  supplied  through 
the  Dardanelles.  But  we  have  to  see  the  war  as 
a  whole.  It  would  be  folly,  which  might 
jeopardize  the  final  victory  of  which  alone  we 
have  any  right  to  think,  to  undertake  any  mili- 
tary action  without  the  completest  preparation 
and  everj^  assurance  of  success  humanly  possible 
to  obtain.  If  the  war  material  and  the  military 
forces  required  were  not  available,  however  pain- 
ful inaction  may  prove,  it  were  criminal  to  go  off 
half-cock." 

"Just  so,"  King  Constantine  replied;  "that  is 
precisely  what  I  have  told  the  French  and  Brit- 
ish ministers  every  time  they  have  urged  me  to 
cooperate  with  the  Entente  in  the  war,  when  they 
have  been  unable  themselves  to  guarantee  a  suf- 
ficient force  to  insure  us  all  against  disaster." 

General  de  Castelnau  did  not  visit  Venizelos 
148 


ENCROACHMENTS 

during  his  stay  in  Athens.  To  parry  the  effect 
of  this  upon  the  Cretan's  followers,  Venizelos's 
friends  organized  a  popular  manifestation  in  fa- 
vor of  the  former  premier  on  his  saint's  day,  De- 
cember 28.  The  demonstration  was  remarkably 
successful.  Thousands  of  visitors  called  at  the 
Cretan's  house,  and  telegrams  from  Greeks  all 
over  the  world  poured  in  upon  him.  It  was  evi- 
dent that  whatever  the  Greek  people  might  think 
of  Venizelos's  war  policy  his  personal  popularity 
was  undimmed.  This,  too,  served  to  strengthen 
the  Entente  diplomatists  in  their  close  alliance 
with  the  Cretan,  and  spurred  their  efforts  to 
compass  his  return  to  power. 

JNIeanwhile,  the  military  and  naval  authorities 
of  the  Entente  were  sparing  no  opportunity  to 
visit  a  resentment  against  the  Skouloudis  gov- 
ernment, for  its  policy  of  neutrality  at  any  price, 
upon  the  whole  Greek  state.  The  demonstration 
on  Venizelos's  saint's  day  was  emphasized  by  a 
French  occupation  of  the  island  of  Castellorizo, 
one  of  the  Greek  islands  in  dispute  with  Turkey 
since  the  unsatisfactory  Greco-Turkish  settle- 
ment in  1914.  On  December  30,  following  a 
successful  German  air  raid  on  Saloniki,  General 

149 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Sarrail  ordered  the  arrest  of  all  the  consuls  of  the 
Central  empires  stationed  in  Saloniki,  took 
forcible  possession  of  their  consulates,  seized  their 
official  papers,  and  finally,  with  considerable  os- 
tentation, deported  them  and  a  great  number  of 
their  nationals,  who  had  been  arrested  at  the 
same  time.  A  score  of  Greek  subjects  were  also 
arrested  on  charges  of  espionage  and  propa- 
ganda. 

While  the  measure  was  not  altogether  a  sur- 
prise to  the  Greek  Government,  and  was  one  ob- 
viously dictated  by  military  caution  and  to  be 
anticipated  from  the  moment  it  was  decided  that 
the  Allied  forces  remain  in  Macedonia,  the  man- 
ner of  conducting  the  arrests  deeply  wounded  the 
Greek  people.  The  Greek  Government  had 
been  assured  by  the  Entente  ministers  that  the 
consuls  of  the  Central  empires  would  not  be  ex- 
pelled without  previous  warning.  No  warning 
was  given,  however,  and  on  January  2  the  Nor- 
wegian consul  was  likewise  arrested  and  de- 
ported, and  the  consuls  of  the  Central  empires 
and  the  Dutch  consular  officer  at  Mitylene,  as 
well  as  a  number  of  Greek  residents  of  that  island, 
were  taken  into  custody  and  expelled  from  Greek 

150 


ENX'ROACHMENTS 

territory.  The  iDrotest  of  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment for  these  events  was  couched  in  no  measured 
terms. 

While  irritating  measures  of  this  character, 
touching  vitally  the  sovereignty  of  Greece,  were 
being  taken  by  the  Entente  military  and  naval 
authorities,  a  letter  written  by  a  member  of  the 
British  naval  mission  in  Greece,  and  found  in  a 
diplomatic  pouch  a  German  submarine  had  seized 
on  the  person  of  Colonel  Napier,  was  made  public 
in  Berlin  and  its  text  telegraphed  to  Athens. 
The  writer  advocated  the  dethronement  of  King 
Constantine  by  the  Allies  and  the  erection  of 
Greece  into  a  republic,  with  Venizelos  at  its  head. 
The  letter  was  a  personal  one  and  reflected  no 
tangible  official  opinion.     Nevertheless,  there  was 
no  doubt  in  the  minds  of  the  Greeks  that  it  re- 
vealed a  plan  which  had  been  seriously  discussed 
in  the  Entente  legations  at  Athens.     General 
Sarrail  himself  had  been  more  frank  than  politic 
in  his  expressions  along  this  line.     The  French 
minister  to  Greece  was  widely  quoted  as  having 
declared  of  the  Greeks  that  "the  only  way  to 
handle  these  Orientals  is  by  force."     The  recent 
course  of  the  Allied  military  and  naval  authori- 

153 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ties  gave  color  to  this  alleged  statement.  While 
Venizelos  himself  at  that  period  publicly  refused 
to  consider  a  republic  in  Greece  as  either  desir- 
able or  probable,^  he  permitted  many  of  his  fol- 
lowers to  advocate,  unrebuked,  a  revolution  and 
a  change  of  government.  The  Venizelist  press, 
also  under  Entente  supervision,  conducted  a  bit- 
ter campaign  against  the  Greek  general  staff  with 
whose  views  the  King  was  known  to  accord. 

The  blockade,  which  had  formally  ended  on 
December  11,  proved  to  be  still  virtually  in 
operation.  The  streets  of  Athens  were  kept  in 
semi-darkness  by  the  lack  of  coal.  Breadstuffs 
increased  rapidly  in  price,  and  the  people  of 
Greece  as  well  as  the  army  were  slowly  pinched 
as  by  an  invisible  hand.  On  January  6  the  sup- 
ply of  flour  available  for  the  Athenian  bakeries 
was  sufficient  only  for  four  days.  A  financial 
boycott  by  the  Entente  also  made  itself  felt.  The 
Skouloudis  government  was  at  its  wits'  end  to 
maintain  itself. 

Convinced  that  these  repressive  measures  on 
the  part  of  the  Entente  could  only  be  intended 
to  force  him  out  of  neutrality.  King  Constanthie 

1  See  Appendix  6. 

154 


ENCROACHMENTS 

felt  that  if  his  motives  for  remaining  neutral  were 
better  understood,  his  sincerity  would  at  once  be 
appreciated,  and  public  oi)inion  would  force  an 
abandonment  by  the  Entente  of  their  policy  of 
coercion.  With  this  in  view,  the  Greek  mon- 
arch received  one  after  another  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  foreign  press  to  whom  he  explained 
his  purpose  with  that  engaging  candor,  that  en- 
tire absence  of  any  mental  reservation,  so  char- 
acteristic of  him.  He  felt  that  those  who  read 
his  frank  statements  could  not  but  appreciate  and 
approve  his  attitude.  It  is  a  significant  com- 
mentary upon  pubhc  opinion  in  Europe  in  these 
war  times  that  in  not  one  country  to  whose  people 
Constantine  of  Greece  addressed  himself  directly 
through  the  public  press  did  he  find  any  sym- 
pathy with  the  stand  he  had  taken  to  save  his 
country  from  the  horrors  of  war,  or  any  real  be- 
lief in  the  disinterestedness  of  his  high  purpose. 

One  of  these  statements  explaining  his  attitude 
King  Constantine  communicated  also  to  me  for 
publication  in  America,  since  it  elaborated  the  po- 
sition previously  taken  in  his  declaration  of  De- 
cember 4,  that  "Greece  would  not  be  cajoled  or 
coerced  out  of  neutralit}'."     When  he  gave  me  a 

155 


CONSTANTINE  1  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

resume  of  this  statement,  made  originally  to  Dr 
Fries-Schwenzen,  the  correspondent  of  the  Lo-^ 
kal  Anzeiger  of  Berlin,  he  begged  me  to  "make 
the  people  of  the  United  States  understand  that  I 
am  no  more  pro-German  than  President  Wil- 
son," as  he  put  it.  "I  am  pro-Greek,"  he  went 
on,  "just  as  your  President  tries  to  be  only  pro- 
American.  It  is  one  of  the  saddest  evidences  of 
the  blind  hatreds  and  prejudices  evoked  by  this 
war  that  people  who  should  and  in  their  sober 
senses  do  know  better,  insist  upon  imputing  to 
others  motives  which  they  could  never  con- 
ceivably have  entertained. 

"Whether  the  Balkan  question  will  be  satis- 
factorily solved  by  this  European  war  I  do  not 
know,"  King  Constantine  declared.  "No  one 
dares  to  predict  that  in  this  part  of  the  world 
another  bloody  war  will  not  break  out  before  a 
solution  can  be  reached  of  these  most  complicated 
questions  of  nationality.  No  one  hopes  more 
than  I  that  such  a  disaster  can  be  avoided.  But, 
as  I  have  so  often  said,  our  taking  part  in  the 
present  conflict  is  not  a  Balkan  matter — it  would 
merely  engulf  us  in  a  world  struggle.  The  first 
victims  of  such  a  war  are  naturally  the  smaller 

156 


ENCROACHMENTS 

states  having  fewer  resources  within  themselves. 
Our  neutrahty,  therefore,  is  not  a  sign  of  weak- 
ness, but  the  fruit  of  a  dehberate  intention  to 
husband  our  strength  for  later  difficult  times. 
That  is  why  I  cling  to  my  policy  of  conserving 
the  freedom  and  interest  of  my  people  without 
spilling  their  blood." 

Respecting  his  attitude  toward  Germany  and 
his  brother-in-law,  the  Kaiser,  the  king  said: 

"I  am  absolutely  free.  I  am  bound  by  no  per- 
sonal interest.  Wherefore  I  can  say  with  a  clear 
conscience  that  I  have  only  the  interest  of  my 
people  before  my  eyes.  .  .  .  Besides,  sentiment 
plays  very  little  part  in  politics.  I  do  not  let 
myself  be  influenced  by  any  sympathies,  antipa- 
thies, or  other  feelings.  I  have  the  duty  to  look 
only  after  the  interests  of  my  people  with  all  my 
ability." 


157 


CHAPTER  X 

KING   CONSTANTINE   SPEAKS   HIS   MIND 

King  Constantine's  series  of  statements  to 
the  foreign  press  made  no  impression  on  the  En- 
tente pohcy  in  the  near  East.  The  coercion  ap- 
phed  to  Greece  continued  unabated.  What  was 
left  of  the  Serbian  army,  broken,  starving,  ex- 
hausted, decimated  by  cholera,  arrived  at  the 
Adriatic  coast  of  Albania.  Not  a  third  of  the 
original  force  that  had  borne  the  shock  of  the 
combined  attack  of  Bulgarians,  Austrians,  and 
Germans  remained.  The  failure  of  the  Entente 
to  send  the  150,000  men  to  Macedonia  as  prom- 
ised, the  refusal  of  Great  Britain  to  permit 
Serbia  to  attack  the  Bulgarians  before  their  mo- 
bilization could  be  completed,  the  insistence  of  the 
Entente  that  Serbia  make  no  separate  peace,  had 
done  their  work.  As  a  fighting  unit  of  any  real 
military  value,  the  Serbian  army  had  ceased  to 
exist. 

158 


KING  CONSTANTIXE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

The  Austrians  were  in  close  pursuit  of  the 
Serbs.  The  latter  begged  refuge  of  Italy.  But 
the  Itahan  Government,  fearful  of  an  epidemic 
of  cholera,  refused.  The  remaining  allies,  in 
tardy  pity  upon  the  lot  of  the  Serbs,  seized  the 
Greek  island  of  Corfu,  and  in  open  violation  of 
the  Hellenic  Constitution  as  well  as  of  the 
treaty  of  1864,  by  which  the  Ionian  Islands 
were  ceded  to  Greece  on  the  distinct  condition 
that  they  remain  forever  neutral,  the  Serbian 
army  was  established  on  the  island.  The  Greeks 
protested  that  the  cholera  was  quite  as  dangerous 
to  the  civil  population  of  Greece  as  to  the  Italians. 
Their  protest  was  ignored.  The  French  took 
possession  of  Emperor  William's  chateau,  the 
Achilleon.  They  hoisted  the  French  flag  upon 
the  building  and  turned  it  into  a  hospital. 

Here,  as  in  the  seizure  of  the  consulates  of  the 
Central  empires  in  Saloniki,  Mitylene,  and  else- 
where in  Greece,  Allied  authorities  expected  to 
find  proofs  that  enemy  submarines  were  being 
supplied  from  Greece.  They  seem,  however,  to 
have  been  too  credulous  of  an  intelligence  service 
whose  activities  were  confined  to  mere  unsub- 
stantiated assertions.     The  "compromising  doc- 

159 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

uments"  so  freely  promised  to  the  press  on  each 
occasion  of  seizure,  were  not  forthcoming. 
Nevertheless,  the  Venizelist  press  of  Athens, 
under  the  direct  supervision  of  a  member  of  the 
British  legation  charged  with  that  work,  printed 
the  most  fantastic  stories  and  the  bitterest  attacks 
upon  King  Constantine.  The  British  and 
French  press  were  only  slightly  less  intemperate 
in  their  arraignment  of  the  Greek  monarch,  on 
grounds  for  which  no  shadow  of  evidence  existed ; 
not  the  slightest  tendency  to  fair  play  toward  the 
Greeks  or  the  Greek  sovereign  was  shown  by  the 
newspapers  of  either  country.  The  "Echo  de 
Paris"  even  suppressed  a  personal  statement  of 
King  Constantine,  by  which  the  Greek  monarch 
sought  to  place  his  side  of  the  case  before  the 
French  public. 

The  blockade,  for  which  no  reason  was  ever 
assigned,  was  literally  starving  the  Greeks. 
Factories  were  closed  for  lack  of  coal  and  thou- 
sands of  laborers  were  thrown  out  of  work.  The 
claim  of  the  Venizelist  newspapers  that  the 
Cretan's  dismissal  from  the  premiership  in  March 
had  been  "unconstitutional"  furnished  the  chie 
to  these  coercive  measures :  the  Entente  was  seek- 

160 


KING  CONSTANTINE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

ing  to  compel  the  return  of  Venizelos  to  power, 
and  through  that  means  to  add  the  Greek  army 
to  the  Entente  forces  in  INIacedonia.  The  as- 
surances contained  in  the  British  Legation's  com- 
munique of  Xovember  19,  1915,  that  "it  is  not 
the  intention  of  the  AUied  powers  to  constrain 
Greece  to  abandon  her  neutrahty"  were  shown 
to  have  been  mere  paper  words  marking  a  subtler 
policy  of  undeclared,  but  effective,  hostility  to 
every  other  regime  in  Greece  save  that  of  the 
Allies'  man,  Venizelos.  This  "unconstitution- 
ality" thesis  was  an  afterthought.  Venizelos 
himself  had  first  accepted  the  Constitution  of  the 
Zaimis  cabinet,  and  then  had  overthrown  it, 
forcing  the  dissolution  of  the  Boule  and  new  elec- 
tions. It  was  only  when  he  became  convinced 
that  elections  would  spell  his  defeat  that  he  re- 
called the  existence  of  the  Constitution,  article 
XCIX  of  which  he  had  violated  in  his  invitation 
to  a  foreign  army  to  land  on  Greek  soil,  without 
a  special  law. 

The  forced  evacuation  of  Saloniki  by  the  Greek 
troops ;  the  taking  possession  by  the  Allies  of  the 
Greek  railways  and  telegraphs  in  Macedonia  and 
the  ^gean  islands;  the  Allied  seizure  of  Milo, 

161 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Castellorizo,  and  Corfu  on  top  of  their  previous 
occupation  of  Imbros,  Lemnos,  Tenedos,  and 
Mitylene;  the  press  campaign  in  England  and 
France  against  King  Constantine  and  his  gov- 
ernment; the  continual  blockade  of  Greece  with 
no  reason  given  for  its  maintenance — these  things 
deeply  angered  the  Greeks  and  did  more  to  en- 
gender hostility  against  the  Entente  than  all  the 
rather  too  obvious  and  fruitless  propaganda  of 
Baron  von  Schenck,  the  German  agent  in  Athens. 
The  climax  of  an  intolerable  situation  was 
reached  when  General  Sarrail  ordered  his  troops 
to  destroy  the  steel  bridge  over  the  Struma 
River  near  Demir  Hissar.  The  bridge  consti- 
tuted the  only  line  of  communication  between  the 
Greek  forces  in  eastern  Macedonia  and  their  staff 
commander,  General  Moscopoulos,  whose  head- 
quarters were  still  in  Saloniki.  It  was  also  the 
only  land  means  of  transporting  supplies  to  the 
Greek  soldiers  in  that  sector.  The  open  road- 
stead of  Cavalla  offered  very  limited  facilities  for 
an  organized  commissary  service.  The  bridge, 
too,  had  cost  a  great  deal  of  money.  Its  destruc- 
tion for  military  purposes  was  scarcely  necessary 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  Greek  army  on  the 

163 


KING  CONSTANTINE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

Allies'  right  wing  had  once  before  protected  Gen- 
eral Sarr ail's  force  from  a  flank  attack  and  were 
still  in  a  position  to  do  so  again  at  need.  So 
long  as  the  Greeks  did  not  evacuate  eastern 
JNIacedonia,  the  Bulgarians  could  not  descend 
into  that  sector  without  encountering  a  resistance 
from  the  Greeks  whose  mobilization  was  being 
continued  solely  to  meet  such  an  emergency.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  evacuation  of  eastern  Mace- 
donia— of  which  no  one  in  Greece  then  dreamed 
— would  have  required  weeks,  owing  to  the  lim- 
ited harbor  facilities  of  Cavalla.  There  would 
therefore  have  been  time  a-plenty  to  destroy  the 
Demir  Hissar  bridge  before  any  such  evacuation 
could  be  completed. 

The  reason  for  General  Sarrail's  act  was  pre- 
cisely that  which  had  motived  the  other  drastic 
measures  he  had  taken  toward  the  Greeks.  His 
intelligence  service  was  largely  composed  of  active 
adherents  of  Venizelos.  The  Entente  legations 
in  Athens  secured  the  information  thej^  furnished 
General  Sarrail  from  Mr.  Venizelos  himself,  with 
whom  they  were  in  constant  conference,  and  from 
his  partizans.  Both  Mr.  Venizelos  and  his  fol- 
lowers wished  to  force  the  retirement  of  the  Skou- 

163 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

loudis  government,  in  the  belief  that  King  Con- 
stantine  would  be  compelled  to  recall  the  Cretan 
to  power  and  thus  renew  the  contact  of  Venizelos' 
followers  with  the  public  treasury.  Whatever 
advice  these  interested  parties  could  give  the  En- 
tente officials  to  inspire  rejjressive  measures  upon 
the  Skouloudis  government — and  incidentally 
upon  all  of  Greece — was  given  with  a  will.  The 
interest  of  the  Entente  was  enlisted  by  the  as- 
surance that  once  Venizelos  was  returned  to 
power,  Greece  would  promptly  be  uncondition- 
ally joined  to  the  Entente  and  an  army  of 
250,000  men  added  to  the  Allies,  who  were  in  dire 
need  of  such  an  increase  of  their  force. 

King  Constantine  was  as  well  aware  of  these 
intrigues  and  their  motive  as  every  one  else  in 
Greece.  He  had  tried  to  clear  the  atmosphere 
by  a  frank  statement  of  his  intentions.  When  he 
found  that  this  was  misinterpreted,  he  made  a 
number  of  more  detailed  explanations  of  the 
reasons  for  his  attitude,  to  representatives  of  the 
foreign  press.  Neither  were  these  received  in 
any  greater  spirit  of  fairness  to  the  Greek  mon- 
arch. On  January  13,  therefore,  when  the  news 
of  the  destruction  of  the  Demir  Hissar  bridge 

164 


KING  CONSTANTINE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

reached  him,  implying  subtly  as  the  act  did  that 
the  Greek  troops  east  of  the  Struma  River  were 
a  menace  instead  of  a  protection  to  General 
Sarrail's  army,  King  Constantine  sent  for  me  to 
come  to  the  palace. 

He  was  very  deeply  moved  by  the  trend  of 
events  in  Greece  and  especially  by  the  whole 
hostile  attitude  of  the  Allies  toward  his  govern- 
ment, which  he  knew  to  be  founded  on  no  tenable 
grounds.  He  told  me  that  he  wished  to  express 
through  the  American  press  his  profound  indig- 
nation at  "the  unheard-of  high-handedness  of  the 
recent  action  of  the  Allies  toward  Greece." 
With  scarcely  suppressed  rage  he  recited  one  by 
one  a  bill  of  wrongs  committed  by  the  Allied 
forces  in  INIacedonia.  Beginning  with  the  unful- 
filled promise  to  send  150,000  men  to  the  rescue 
of  Serbia,  which  had  almost  induced  Greece  to 
share  the  tragic  fate  of  her  ally — a  fate  escaped 
only  by  the  caution  of  the  Greek  general  staff  in 
delaying  action  until  it  could  be  seen  how  much 
of  a  force  France  and  England  would  really 
send — he  took  up  detail  after  detail  of  systematic 
mistreatment  of  the  Greeks  by  the  Entente. 
The  pillage  of  the  Greek  churches  in  Macedonia 

165 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  invaluable  icons  for  which  a  few  cents  were 
left  on  the  altar  by  the  Allied  soldiers  who  took 
them;  the  forced  evacuation  of  Greek  peasants 
from  their  homes  to  make  room  for  Allied  camps 
and  earthworks ;  the  destruction  of  whole  villages 
between  the  warring  lines ;  the  Allied  assumption 
of  military  control  of  Greece's  second  city;  the 
Allied  exercise  of  police  powers  in  Greek  waters ; 
the  imprisonment  of  Greeks  upon  charges  of  es- 
pionage with  no  ojDportunity  given  them  to  defend 
themselves  or  to  face  their  accusers — an  unend- 
ing catalogue  of  what  the  indignant  monarch 
called  "the  Allies'  encroachments  on  the  sov- 
ereignty of  Greece,  culminating  in  the  occupa- 
tion of  Corfu  and  the  destruction  of  the  Demir 
Hissar  bridge." 

Probably  no  such  arraignment  of  the  conduct 
of  civilized  powers  by  the  ruler  of  a  free  country 
as  that  I  listened  to  from  King  Constantine  has 
ever  been  made  in  history.  He  knew  every 
wrong  to  every  individual  peasant,  every  insult 
flung  at  a  veteran  of  Kilkis  or  Janina,  every  oc- 
casion upon  which  Allied  aviators  had  dropped 
bombs  as  if  by  accident  upon  Greek  camps — and 
he  felt  these  things  far  more  than  all  the  abuse 

166 


KING  CONSTANTINE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

and  ridicule  of  his  own  person  that  had  been  pub- 
lished in  the  Entente  press — with  the  permission 
of  the  government  censors. 

"It  is  the  merest  cant,"  he  thundered,  "for 
England  and  France  to  talk  about  Germany's 
violation  of  the  neutrahty  of  Belgium  and  Iaix- 
emburg  after  what  they  themselves  have  done 
and  are  doing  here.  I  have  tried  every  waj'^  I 
know  how  to  get  fair  play  from  the  British  and 
French  press  and  a  fair  hearing  by  the  British 
and  French  public.  No  sooner  has  a  British 
newspaper  attacked  Greece  with  the  most  amaz- 
ing perversions  of  fact  and  misrepresentations 
of  motives  than  I  have  called  its  correspondent 
and  given  him  face  to  face  a  full  statement  of 
Greece's  position.  I  have  given  the  frankest 
statement  to  the  French  press  through  one  of  the 
newspapers  most  bitterly  attacking  Greece.  Its 
publication  was  not  permitted  by  the  French 
censor.  The  only  forum  of  public  opinion  open 
to  me  is  America.  The  situation  is  far  too  vital 
for  me  to  care  a  snap  about  royal  dignity  in  the 
matter  of  interviews  when  the  very  life  of  Greece 
as  an  independent  country  is  at  stake.  I  shall 
appeal  to  America  again  and  again,  if  necessary, 

167 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

for  that  fair  hearing  denied  me  by  the  AlHed 
countries. 

"Just  look  at  a  list  of  Greek  territory  already 
occupied  by  Allied  troops — Lemnos,  Imbros, 
JNIytilene,  Castelloriza,  Corfu,  Saloniki,  including 
the  Chalcidic  peninsula,  and  a  large  part  of  Mace- 
donia. In  proportion  to  all  Greece  it  is  as  if 
that  part  of  the  United  States  won  from  Mexico 
after  the  Mexican  war  were  occupied  by  foreign 
troops — and  not  so  much  as  by  your  leave! 
What  does  it  matter  that  they  promise  to  pay 
when  the  war  is  over  for  the  damage  done? 
They  cannot  pay  for  the  sufferings  of  my  people 
driven  out  of  their  homes !  They  plead  military 
necessity.  It  was  under  the  constraint  of  mili- 
tary necessity  that  Germany  invaded  Belgium 
and  occupied  Luxemburg.  It  is  no  use  claim- 
ing that  the  neutrality  of  Greece  is  not  guaran- 
teed by  the  powers  violating  it,  as  was  the  case 
with  Belgium;  for  the  neutrality  of  Corfu  is 
guaranteed  by  Great  Britain,  France,  Russia, 
Austria,  and  Prussia,  and  yet  that  has  made  no 
difference  in  their  action.  And  what  about  that 
plea  of  military  necessity?  Where  is  the  mili- 
tary necessity  to  destroy  the  Demir  Hissar  bridge 

168 


KING  COXSTANTINE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

which  cost  a  miUion  and  a  half  drachnicU  and 
which  is  the  only  practicable  route  by  which  my 
troops  in  eastern  JNIacedonia  can  be  revictualed? 
The  bridge  was  mined  and  could  have  been  blown 
up  at  a  moment's  notice  at  the  approach  of  the 
enemy.  It  is  admitted  that  no  enemies  were  any- 
where near  the  bridge,  and  there  was  no  indica- 
tion that  they  were  coming.  \Vliat  military 
reason,  therefore,  was  there  to  blow  up  the  bridge 
now,  except  to  starve  out  the  Greek  troops 
around  Serres  and  Drama  ?  Where  is  the  neces- 
sity of  the  occupation  of  Corfu?  If  Greece  is  an 
ally  of  Serbia,  so  is  Italy,  and  the  transportation 
from  Albania  to  Italy  is  simpler  than  to  Corfu. 
Is  it  that  the  Italians  refuse  to  accept  the  Serbs, 
fearing  the  spread  of  cholera?  Why  should  the 
Allies  think  the  Greeks  want  to  be  endangered  by 
a  cholera  epidemic  any  more  than  the  Italians? 
They  say  that  they  are  occupying  Castelloriza, 
Corfu,  and  other  points  in  the  search  for  sub- 
marine bases.  The  British  Legation  in  Athens 
has  a  standing  offer  of  two  thousand  pounds — a 
great  fortune  to  any  Greek  fisherman — for  in- 
formation leading  to  the  detection  of  submarine 
bases,  but  it  has  never  yet  received  any  about  a 

169 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

submarine  base  in  Greece;  no  one  has  ever  yet 
seen  any  submarine  in  Greek  waters,  and  there  is 
no  evidence  whatever  of  hostile  submarines  being 
suppHed  from  Greece.^ 

"The  history  of  the  Alhed  Balkan  politics  re- 
cords one  crass  mistake  after  another;  and  now, 
out  of  pique  over  the  failure  of  their  every  Bal- 
kan calculation,  they  try  to  take  out  on  Greece 
the  result  of  their  own  stupidity.  We  warned 
them  that  the  Gallipoli  enterprise  was  bound  to 
fail;  that  negotiations  with  Bulgaria  would  be 
fruitless ;  that  the  Austrians  and  Germans  would 
certainly  crush  Serbia.  They  would  not  believe 
us ;  and  now  because  all  we  said  proved  true,  like 
angry,  unreasonable  children,  the  Entente  turn 
upon  Greece.  They  have  deliberately  thrown 
away  every  advantage  they  ever  had  of  Greek 
sympathy.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  eighty 
per  cent,  of  the  Greeks  were  favorable  to  the  En- 
tente ;  to-day  not  forty — no,  not  twenty  per  cent, 
would  turn  a  hand  to  aid  the  Allies." 

1  "The  charges  [that  German  submarines  are  supplied  from 
Greece]  against  the  government  continued,  though  no  foundation 
for  them  was  ever  in  any  way  brought  to  light.  And  that  con- 
stituted one  of  the  principal  causes  of  the  irritation  which  grew 
up  against  the  Entente  governments." — "Gazette  de  I<ausanne" 
(Francophile);    No.  209,   1916. 

176 


KING  COXSTANTIXE  SPEAKS  HIS  MIND 

"Why  doesn't  your  Majesty  demobilize?"  I 
ventured  to  suggest. 

"Perhaps  I  shall,"  he  replied,  candidly,  "but 
I  don't  feel  that  I  can  afford  to  disarm  before  the 
fate  of  Saloniki  is  decided.  The  Allies  evacu- 
ated Gallipoh  after  a  year.  One  day  they  may 
change  their  minds  about  Saloniki,  leaving  the 
place  at  the  mercy  of  the  first  comer.  Saloniki 
is  Greek,  and  I  propose  that  it  shall  remain 
Greek." 

"But  does  your  Majesty  believe,"  I  persisted, 
"that  the  Greek  mobilization  can  continue  the 
year,  perhaps  the  two  years,  the  war  may  last; 
and  will  the  Allies  continue  to  furnish  money 
for  a  Greek  army  that  does  not  intend  to  aid 
them?" 

"They  want  Greece  to  remain  mobilized  be- 
cause they  still  believe  we  can  be  persuaded  to 
join  them.     They  are  badly  mistaken." 

One  question  had  haunted  me  since  I  first  met 
King  Constantine.  I  knew — I  had  good  reason 
to  know — that  he  was  in  no  sense  pro-German. 
But  to  what  extent  had  he  been  impressed  by  the 
military  successes  of  the  Germans  so  far  in  the 
war;  how  far  was  he  moved  in  his  attitude  by 

171 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

fear  of  a  complete  German  victory  ?     I  asked  the 
question  point-blank. 

"Does  your  Majesty  believe  Germany  can  be 
victorious?" 

"That  depends  on  what  is  meant  by  victorious. 
If  you  mean  she  will  take  London,  Paris,  and 
Petrograd,  probably  not.  But  I  believe  the  Ger- 
mans can  defend  themselves  where  they  are  for  a 
very  long  time.  If  economic  exhaustion  does  not 
force  Germany  to  sue  for  peace,  I  believe  it  will 
be  most  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  conquer  her, 
militarily." 

"Then  what  does  your  Majesty  think  will  be 
the  outcome  of  the  war?" 

"A  draw — don't  you?"  he  said,  leaning  for- 
ward suddenly  and  looking  me  squarely  in  the 
eye.  For  a  moment  a  sort  of  panic  seized  me. 
I  wondered  if  it  could  really  be  true.  Then  I 
remembered  the  men  of  France  as  I  had  seen 
them  on  their  own  battle  line — not  as  they  were 
in  that  far  Macedonian  land — so  brave,  so  sure, 
so  modest,  so  strong. 

"No,  Sir,"  I  said,  quietly.     "I  do  not." 


17a 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   QUESTION    OF    GOOD    FAITH 

Neither  the  French  nor  British  Governments 
had  any  intention  of  permitting  King  Constan- 
tine's  arraignment  of  their  poHcy  in  the  near  East 
to  reach  the  American  pubhc  to  whom  it  was  ad- 
dressed, could  that  be  prevented.  The  Greek 
sovereign's  appeal  for  fair  play  to  the  people  of 
the  United  States  filled  the  chancelleries  of  Lon- 
don and  Paris  with  consternation. 

Before  cabhng  my  message  to  America  I  com- 
municated the  content  of  King  Constantine's 
statement  to  M.  Guillemin,  the  French  minister 
to  Greece,  with  whom  I  was  on  most  cordial 
terms.  He  rebuked  me  as  a  friend  of  France  for 
transmitting  a  statement  which  he  characterized 
as  "German  propaganda"  and  at  once  tele- 
graphed his  government  in  cipher  to  have  my 
message  stopped  by  the  censor.  When  I  learned 
that  this  had  been  done,  I  sent  a  duplicate  cable- 
gram   over    England — as    all    messages    from 

173 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Greece  to  the  United  States  must  pass  either 
through  France  or  England  and  be  subject  to 
the  Allied  censorship — and  I  took  the  matter  up 
with  Sir  Francis  Elliot,  the  British  minister  to 
Greece. 

"Nothing  is  gained,"  I  told  the  Enghsh 
diplomatist,  "by  suppressing  one  side  of  a  case. 
The  Allies  have  dozens  of  correspondents  in 
Greece  who  flood  the  Entente  and  even  the  Amer- 
ican press  with  their  side  of  what  is  happening 
in  the  near  East.  I  believe  that  King  Con- 
stantine  is  entitled  to  fair  play,  and  I  shall  see 
that  he  gets  it.  If  this  message  is  stopped  as  a 
cablegram,  it  will  arrive  by  post  later.  You  can- 
not keep  the  truth  down.  You  had  better  let  it 
go  through." 

Sir  Francis  seemed  to  agree  with  me  and  tele- 
graphed to  his  government  his  belief  that  the 
statement  should  pass.  The  British  censors 
thought  otherwise,  however.  The  message  was 
also  held  in  London.  I  finally  informed  M. 
Guillemin  that  unless  the  message  was  passed,  I 
should  telegraph  it  to  Berlin  to  be  forwarded  by 
wireless  or,  if  necessary,  would  take  it  to  New 
York  in  person,  thus  avoiding  all  censorships. 

174 


THE  QUESTION  OF  GOOD  FAITH 

After  six  days  of  holding  the  message,  Premier 
Briand  decided  at  last  that  it  would  be  more 
politic  to  let  it  go ;  but  he  made  it  a  condition  that 
a  semi-official  reply  from  the  French  Govermnent 
be  published  simultaneously. 

I  accepted  this  compromise.     The  reply  was 
prepared.     A  week  after  it  had  been  given  me  by 
the  King  of  the  Hellenes,  his  statement  was  pub- 
lished by  permission  of  the  Alhes,  their  counter- 
statement  printed  side  by  side  with  the  Greek 
monarch's    words.     The    counter-statement    in 
substance  declared  that  "the  Allies  only  went  to 
Saloniki  to  succor  Serbia  at  Greece's  invitation" ; 
as  for  the  occupation  of  Greek  territory  with 
which  King  Constantine  had  charged  the  En- 
tente, the  statement  asserted,  "There  is  no  ques- 
tion  of   occupation,   but   of   temporary   use   of 
certain  portions."     It  is  worthy  of  remark  that 
the  "temporary  use"  of  some  portions  has  al- 
ready lasted  two  and  a  half  years  and   shows 
signs  of  constant  extension  rather  than  cessation. 
The  French  statement  further  set  forth  that 
the  Greek  Government  "tried  by  every  means  to 
take  part  in  the  Gallipoli  enterprise"— an  asser- 
tion scarcely  an  accurate  summary  of  the  nego- 

175 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

tiations  between  Greece  and  the  Entente  in  April, 
1915,  as  shown  by  the  facts  I  have  ah-eady 
brought  out.  In  this  connection  a  letter  from 
ex-Minister  Apostolos  Alexandris  to  Venizelos 
written  during  the  negotiations  of  April,  1915, 
and  published  in  the  "Bulletin  Hellenique"  of 
December  31,  1916,  shows  plainly  enough  that 
both  Mr.  Venizelos  and  his  lieutenant  were  in  a 
position  to  know  that  the  Entente,  from  the  first, 
were  not  disposed  to  accept  Greece's  proposals 
to  join  the  Gallipoli  expedition  upon  a  basis  of 
the  recognition  of  Greece  as  an  ally  and  a  guar- 
antee of  her  integrity.  Besides  these  points,  M. 
Briand's  unofficial  reply  to  King  Constantine's 
declarations  makes  no  attempt  to  reveal  what 
military  necessity — presumably  the  basis  of  all 
censorship — had  dictated  the  Entente's  efforts  to 
suppress  altogether  King  Constantine's  state- 
ment of  his  side  of  the  case. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  French  and  British 
ministers  had  themselves  drafted  a  reply  to  King 
Constantine,  which  they  proposed  to  give  me  for 
publication.  It  was  chiefly  a  bitter  complaint 
of  the  work  of  Baron  von  Schenck,  the  head  of 
the   German  propaganda   in   Greece,   charging 

176 


THE  QUESTION  OF  GOOD  FAITH 

that  any  j)ro-German  activity  was  inconsistent 
with  Greece's  promised  "benevolent  neutrahty." 
The  French  and  British  ministers  also  asserted 
that  German  submarines  were  supplied  from  the 
Greek  coasts  and  islands,  and  that  the  Greek 
Government  took  no  steps  to  prevent  this  breach 
of  benevolence  toward  the  Entente. 

Though  I  have  no  proof  of  it,  and  though  the 
British  naval  attache  in  Athens  told  King  Con- 
stantine  that  he  also  had  no  proof  of  it,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  German  submarines  have  been  sup- 
plied from  Greece.  As  the  British  have  con- 
trolled with  an  iron  hand  the  distribution  of  every 
gallon  of  benzine  imported  into  Greece — not  a 
gallon  being  allowed  to  be  sold  without  a  writ- 
ten permit  issued  by  the  British  legation — the 
supplying  of  German  submarines  from  Greece 
seems  to  reflect  rather  u2)on  the  efficiency  of  the 
British  control  than  u2)on  the  Greeks.  By  de- 
manding, in  their  memorandum  of  November  26, 
1915,  the  right  to  search  Greek  waters  for  enemy 
submarines  and  their  bases,  the  Entente  would 
appear  to  have  relieved  the  Greeks  of  the  respons- 
ibility of  policing  their  own  coasts.  I  have  been 
informed  by  British  officers  who  reside  on  the 

177 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

west  coast  of  Ireland  that  German  submarines 
have  been  supi^lied  from  that  coast,  and  that  the 
submarine  that  sank  the  Lusitania  was  so  sujj- 
phed.  It  would  seem  to  be  no  easy  matter  to 
control  the  supplying  of  submarines,  even  in  the 
thickly  populated  British  Isles,  and  with  Great 
Britain  at  war.  How  much  less  in  the  sparsely 
populated  islands  of  the  Greek  archipelago! 

As  for  Baron  Schenck's  other  activities,  it  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  he  subsidized  certain  Ath- 
enian newspapers;  that  he  paid  for  the  singing  of 
couplets  ridiculing  the  Entente  upon  the  stage  of 
certain  Greek  reviews.  I  dare  say  he  supplied 
certain  minor  politicians  in  Greece  with  funds. 
But  for  all  this,  the  German  influence  in  Greece 
remained  negligible.  Even  to-day,  when  the  En- 
tente has  employed  such  drastic  methods  of  co- 
ercion against  the  Greek  people,  it  has  made  them 
only  less  favorable  to  the  Entente  cause;  it  has 
not  made  them  pro-German. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  the  German  in- 
fluence in  the  near  East  had  swept  on  toward 
Constantinople  and  had  not  encountered  Greece 
in  its  path.  For  this  reason  if  for  no  other — pre- 
cisely because  the  German  influence  had  extended 

178 


THE  QUESTION  OF  GOOD  FAITH 

widelj^  in  the  Ottoman  Empire — it  had  httle  hold 
in  Greece.  The  Greeks  bear  an  age-long  rancor 
against  the  Turks;  an  influence  dominant  in 
Turkey  would  be  hostilely  regarded  in  Greece. 
On  the  whole,  the  best  statement  of  the  character 
and  extent  of  the  German  operations  in  Greece 
is  perhaps  that  which  Baron  von  Schenck  himself 
made  me  the  day  he  was  expelled  from  Hellenic 
soil  by  the  Entente.  I  had  asked  him  if  he  was 
satisfied  with  his  labors  in  Greece. 

"Up  to  a  certain  point,"  he  rephed.  "Thanks 
to  the  able  assistance  rendered  me  by  the  Allies, 
the  results  have  far  exceeded  my  greatest  ex- 
pectations. You  would  be  surprised  if  you  could 
see  my  budget;  the  whole  world  would  be  as- 
tounded if  it  could  realize  how  much  has  been 
done  with  so  little.  If  the  Allies  continue  to 
make  such  crass  blunders  as  they  have  made  in 
the  last  few  days,  I  cheerfully  leave  my  work  in 
their  hands." 

To  the  impartial  observ^er  in  Greece  the  extent 
of  the  German  propaganda  appears  to  have  been 
greatly  exaggerated  by  three  classes  of  persons, 
for  three  reasons:  by  those  in  charge  of  the 
Anglo-French  propaganda  and  secret  police,  so 

179 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

as  to  secure  greater  credit  for  their  work  and  to 
obtain  from  the  British  and  French  taxpaj^ers 
vast  sums  of  money  devoted  largely  to  wine, 
women,  and  automobiles;  by  the  British  and 
French  diplomatists  to  account  for  the  failure  of 
their  policy  in  the  near  East;  and  finally  by  the 
Venizelists  to  account  for  their  inability  to  de- 
liver the  country  to  the  Entente,  as  they  had  set 
out  to  do. 

The  statement  prepared  by  Sir  Francis  Elliot 
and  M.  Guillemin  in  reply  to  King  Constantine's 
indictment  ends  with  one  significant  declaration: 
"The  whole  question  between  the  Entente  and 
Greece  is  one  of  good  faith.  If  Greece  loyally 
keeps  her  agreements,  she  will  not  suffer." 

So  far,  every  demand  made  of  Greece  by  the 
Entente,  save  that  of  leaving  neutrality  to  sup- 
port Serbia,  has  been  loyally  granted.  In  what 
spirit  was  this  very  practical  benevolence  met  by 
France  and  England? 

On  January  17,  1916,  General  Sarrail  took  the 
supreme  command  of  the  Allied  Orient  armies. 
The  event  was  the  signal  for  constant  friction  be- 
tween Allied  and  Greek  forces  in  Macedonia. 
Two  days  later  certain  Greeks  were  arrested  in 

180 


THE  QUESTION  OF  GOOD  FAITH 

Athens,  charged  with  being  in  the  pay  of  the 
Entente  to  furnish  them  with  the  few  remaining 
secrets  of  the  Greek  staff  and  the  Greek  plans 
for  defending  the  territory  left  them  by  the 
Allied  occupation  of  Central  INIacedonia.  On 
January  20,  the  Allies  placed  a  net  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Greek  harbor  of  Volo  and  it  became  neces- 
sary for  Greek  ships  to  have  the  permission  of  the 
Allied  naval  authorities  to  enter  the  port.  On 
January  28,  the  Greek  fort  of  Karabournou,  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Gulf  of  Saloniki,  was  forcibly 
seized  by  General  Sarrail,  and  the  Greek  garri- 
son disarmed  and  conducted  to  Saloniki  under 
guard.  The  following  day  the  German  consul 
at  Canea,  Crete,  was  arrested,  together  with 
several  Greeks,  and  deported  by  the  Allies.  On 
February  2,  a  German  aviator,  whose  machine 
alighted  within  Greek  lines  in  eastern  Macedonia 
and  whom  the  Greek  Colonel  Orphanidis  was 
preparing  to  intern,  was  taken  by  force  by  a 
French  detachment  and  made  a  prisoner  of  war 
of  the  French.  On  February  17,  the  consular 
officers  of  the  Central  eihpires  in  the  island  of 
Chios  were  likewise  deported,  a  number  of 
Greeks  being  arrested  there  as  well.     Incident 

181 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

followed  incident  of  this  nature,  precisely  as 
when  the  Germans  made  similar  arrests  in  Lux- 
emburg, during  the  early  days  of  the  war.  In 
each  instance  the  man  arrested  had  neither  hear- 
ing nor  appeal.  His  own,  the  Greek,  govern- 
ment was  unable  to  protect  him,  and  any  unsub- 
stantiated denouncement  to  the  Anglo-French 
secret  police  by  a  creditor  or  a  personal  enemy 
was  sufficient  to  condemn  him  to  forcible  banish- 
ment from  his  home  and  country,  without  trial. 

Meanwhile,  to  parry  the  very  profound  effect 
of  the  forcible  occupation  of  Fort  Karabournou, 
the  French  and  British  ministers  officially  in- 
formed the  Greek  premier  on  February  5  that 
the  Allies  would  take  possession  of  no  more 
Greek  territory  and  that  "whatever  might  be 
done  in  the  future  would,  as  in  the  past,  be  under 
the  pressure  of  military  necessity,"  adding,  how- 
ever, that  "the  withdrawal  of  the  Greek  troops 
from  Macedonia  would  leave  the  Allied  powers 
indifferent." 

General  Sarrail's  defensive  fortifications  of 
Saloniki  were  completed.  His  force  had  been 
gradually  increased  to  some  200,000  men.  Prep- 
arations were  under  way  for  a  spring  offensive 

182 


THE  QUESTION  OE  GOOD  FAITH 

against  Bulgaria.  To  clear  the  ground,  the  En- 
tente ministers'  statement  to  INIr.  Skouloudis  was 
cast  out  to  warn  the  Greeks  by  implication  that 
before  the  Allied  conquest  of  their  enemy,  Bul- 
garia, began,  they  could  either  join  the  Allied 
armies  or  demobilize  and  leave  eastern  INIacedonia 
undefended  against  a  Bulgarian  attack.  As  an 
official  Entente  communique  put  it,  in  diplomatic 
language,  "It  is  the  opinion  of  the  Entente  gov- 
ermnents  that  it  depends  upon  Greece  in  con- 
formance with  her  interests  and  the  evolution  of 
future  events  whether  it  is  desirable  to  retain  the 
Greek  army  mobilized." 

In  the  face  of  the  prospect  of  a  successful 
Allied  campaign  against  Bulgaria,  the  Greeks 
began  to  waver  in  their  neutrality.  Prince 
Nicholas,  King  Constantine's  brother,  addressed 
a  long  concihatoiy  letter  to  M.  Emile  Hebrard, 
of  the  Paris  "Temps,"  in  which  he  reviewed  in  de- 
tail the  relations  between  Greece  and  the  En- 
tente, laying  particular  stress  on  the  fact  that 
King  Constantine  had  never  declared  he  was  un- 
willing to  leave  neutrality  under  any  circum- 
stances : 

Doubt  has  been  expressed  in  the  French  and  British 
183 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

press  of  the  good  faith  and  sincerity  of  our  King,  his 
government  and  the  sentiments  of  the  Hellenic  people 
towards  the  Allied  troops.  .  .  .  No  suspicion  could 
more  deeply  wound  the  national  pride  of  the  Hellenic 
people  than  distrust  of  their  traditional  hospitality, 
and  doubt  of  the  word  of  their  sovereign. 

The  condition  imposed  by  King  Constantine 
upon  his  cooperation  with  the  Entente — the  send- 
ing to  the  Balkans  of  a  sufficient  Allied  force  to 
conduct  a  successful  campaign — was  by  the  end 
of  February  in  the  way  of  fulfilment.  The  mo- 
ment was  at  hand  when  a  single  friendly  gesture 
from  France  or  England  to  the  Greek  sovereign 
would  have  added  250,000  Greeks  to  their  army 
in  Macedonia,  bringing  the  total  force  for  an 
offensive  to  450,000  not  counting  the  Serbs,  who 
could  be  reckoned  at  about  80,000  more.  It 
would  have  meant  the  conquest  of  Bulgaria,  the 
cutting  of  the  line  from  Berlin  to  Turkey,  the 
opening  of  a  southern,  ice-free  door  into  Russia, 
perhaps  also  the  fall  of  Constantinople  and  the 
ending  of  the  war  in  1916.  But  the  Entente 
diplomatists  in  Greece  were  lost  in  a  maze  of  local 
politics.  They  were  absorbed  in  fighting  Veni- 
zelos's  battles,  intriguing  with  Venizelos's  sup- 
porters and  writing  editorials  for  the  Venizelist 

184 


V 

■J. 

HI 

7. 

^/^jQ^^ 

■i 

THE  QUESTION  OF  GOOD  FAITH 

newspapers.  In  London  and  Paris,  statesmen 
were  occupied  with  other  and  more  pressing 
problems  than  the  attitude  of  Greece;  they  de- 
pended upon  their  diplomatic  representatives  to 
direct  the  Entente  policy  in  the  near  East,  and 
JNIr.  Venizelos  had  the  diplomatic  representatives 
of  the  Entente  in  his  pocket. 

Then,  suddenly,  the  German  attack  upon 
Verdun  began,  and  seemed  at  first  to  succeed. 
Troops  from  Saloniki  were  shipped  back  to 
France  to  meet  the  emergency.  The  Entente 
Balkan  offensive  became  evidently  impracticable. 
The  Greeks  stiffened  in  their  conviction  that  neu- 
trality was  wisest  for  the  present.  The  En- 
tente's opportunity  came — and  passed. 


187 


CHAPTER  XII 

VENIZELOS   ATTACKS    HIS    KING 

On  February  7,  1916,  I  wrote  General  Sar- 
rail,  suggesting  that  he  visit  King  Constantine  in 
person  and  seek  to  dissipate  by  a  face  to  face 
discussion  some  of  the  friction  accumulating  so 
rapidly.  Just  before  departing  from  Saloniki  at 
the  end  of  December,  I  had  had  a  long  talk  with 
General  Sarrail.  He  had  recited  the  minor  dif- 
ficulties and  annoyances  put  in  his  way  by  the 
Greek  officers  stationed  in  Saloniki,  and  had  re- 
viewed the  handicaps  under  which  he  was  work- 
ing, both  in  respect  to  the  staffs  in  London  and 
Paris  and  to  his  relations  with  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment. Evidently,  his  situation  was  not  brilliant. 
A  study  of  the  character  of  the  country,  the  roads, 
the  bridges,  the  passes,  the  mountains,  had  con- 
vinced him  that  a  minimum  of  half  a  milhon  men 
was  essential  to  any  promising  offensive.  At  the 
beginning  of  1916  he  had  about  one  quarter  that 
number,  and  there  were  no  indications  that  he 
would  ever  receive  the  full  quota  from  France 

188 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

and  England.  In  a  word,  the  sole  prospect  of 
bringing  his  armies  up  to  the  required  strength 
lay  in  securing  the  cooperation  of  the  Greeks. 

''That,"  he  said  gloomily,  "is  in  the  hands  of 
the  diplomatists.  But  you  may  tell  King  Con- 
stantine  one  thing  from  me:  I  am  a  radical  in 
politics,  it  is  true,  and  I  know  that  my  socialistic 
views  have  been  exploited  against  me  with  the 
king.  But  you  may  say  to  him  that  I  am  first 
and  foremost  a  soldier  of  France.  He  is  a  sol- 
dier, a  commanding  officer  victorious  in  two 
wars.  Say  to  him  that  whenever  he  may  decide 
to  join  us  in  the  war,  Maurice  Sarrail,  soldier  of 
France,  will  be  glad  to  serve  under  the  orders  of 
Constantine  I,  soldier  of  Greece." 

I  conveyed  the  message  to  King  Constantine. 
Sarrail's  visit  to  Athens  was  the  result. 

On  February  18,  the  officers  of  the  new  Boule 
were  received  in  audience  by  the  sovereign  and 
pronounced  a  discourse  in  which  the  monarch  was 
lauded  for  having  saved  the  country,  under  the 
powers  conferred  upon  him  by  the  Constitution, 
at  a  most  critical  juncture,  from  the  horrors  of 
war  that  had  overtaken  other  small  states  tak- 
ing part  in  the  general  European  conflict.     There 

189 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

was  no  doubt  that  this  statement  expressed  the 
feehng  of  the  whole  country,  even  of  all  save  the 
most  fanatic  of  the  Venizelists.  But  it  was  an 
unfortunate  preparation  for  Sarrail's  visit  and 
for  the  success  of  his  purpose  to  try  to  convince 
the  commander-in-chief  of  the  Greek  armies  that 
the  military  as  well  as  political  interests  of  Greece 
counseled  a  departure  from  neutrality. 

General  Sarrail's  arrival  in  the  capital  on  Feb- 
ruary 21  was  the  signal  for  a  demonstration  of 
every  jot  of  feeling  of  affection  for  France  which 
the  unhappy  train  of  diplomatic  events  and  mili- 
tary failures  in  the  near  East  had  left  burning  in 
the  hearts  of  the  Greeks.  Plainly,  there  was  still 
a  great  deal  of  sympathy  left  alive,  for  the 
French  commander's  reception  was  a  cordial  one 
both  with  the  people  of  Athens  and  with  King 
Constantine.  The  two  soldiers  understood  one 
another  from  the  first  moment.  Both  brusque, 
both  plain-spoken,  both  wholly  frank,  the  foun- 
dations were  at  once  laid  for  a  wider  understand- 
ing and  cooperation  of  the  dual  forces  in  Mace- 
donia, which  did  not  preclude  a  junction  of  the 
two  armies  in  a  common  military  emprise  at 
the  appropriate  moment.     The  result  of  the  in- 

190 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

terview  on  the  whole  was  mutual  confidence; 
King  Constantine  repeating  to  General  Sarrail 
the  personal  assurance  he  had  already  given  Lord 
Kitchener,  M.  Denys  Cochin,  and  General  de 
Castelnau;  and  Sarrail  explaining  on  his  part  the 
difficulties  under  which  he  was  laboring  and  the 
military  considerations  that  had  impelled  him  to 
certain  seemingly  harsh  measures. 

If  the  conference  was  not  to  bear  early  fruit 
in  a  military  accord  between  the  two  command- 
ers, looking  to  Greece's  entiy  into  the  war  upon 
that  purely  military  basis  which  King  Constan- 
tine had  advised  from  the  start,  those  who  had 
favored  another  basis  of  understanding  must  at 
once  be  active  to  prevent  a  favorable  outcome  of 
the  interview. 

There  were,  evidently,  two  classes  of  persons 
who  would  be  directly  hit  by  a  military  accord 
between  King  Constantine  and  General  Sarrail: 
the  Entente  diplomatists,  whom  such  an  arrange- 
ment would  exhibit  as  ineffective  in  their  nego- 
tiations; and  the  Venizelists,  whom  it  would  de- 
prive of  the  spoils  of  victory  in  the  shape  of 
public  office.  I  do  not  include  the  pro-Ger- 
mans, as  that  class  was  never  very  numerous  or 

191 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

very  powerful  in  Greece,  albeit  active  far  in  ex- 
cess of  its  numbers  and  importance.  To  the 
Venizelists,  however,  a  direct  military  under- 
standing between  the  king  and  the  Fi-ench  gen- 
eral, without  the  Cretan  leader  as  intermediary, 
spelled  disaster  to  their  entire  political  organiza- 
tion, which  could  no  more  live  without  office  in 
Greece  than  a  similar  political  organization  can 
live  without  office  in  the  United  States. 

There  occurred  at  this  juncture,  therefore,  the 
first  of  a  series  of  phenomena  which  continue  to 
occur  hereafter  on  every  occasion  when  it  appears 
at  all  likely  that  King  Constantine  may  reach  an 
agreement  with  the  Entente  through  other  means 
than  through  Venizelos:  the  Venizelists  became 
active,  shifting  their  previous  ground  to  meet  the 
altered  circumstances. 

Following  a  long  conference  with  the  French 
and  British  ministers,  five  days  after  the  depar- 
ture of  General  Sarrail,  Venizelos  announced  out 
of  a  clear  sky  and  in  complete  contradiction  of 
his  former  refusal  to  recognize  the  constitution- 
ality of  the  Boule  elected  on  December  19,  or  of 
the  elections  by  which  it  had  been  chosen,  that  he 
would  himself  stand  for  the  Boule  in  a  by-election 

192 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

to  be  held  on  May  8.  ^letelin  was  chosen  by  the 
Cretan,  though  eastern  Macedonia  and  Chios  also 
held  by-elections  at  the  same  time,  because  JNIyti- 
lene  (Lesbos)  was  then  occupied  as  an  Allied 
naval  base,  and  the  influence  of  the  Allied  au- 
thorities in  the  island  could  be  counted  upon  to 
aid  him  in  the  election.  Also,  the  voters  of 
the  island  of  Lesbos,  like  those  of  most  of  the 
territory  fallen  to  Greek  rule  after  the  Turk- 
ish war,  had  none  of  the  fixed  political  con- 
victions of  the  Greeks  of  old  Greece,  and  were 
consequently  the  readier  to  follow  the  star  of 
political  adventure.  During  his  premiership 
Venizelos  had  bound  the  Lesbians,  as  well  as  the 
inhabitants  of  all  the  newly  acquired  territory, 
to  his  political  fortunes  by  the  creation  of  a  vast 
number  of  well-paid  offices  in  new  Greece,  the 
recipients  of  which  became  at  once  his  ardent  sup- 
porters and  political  organizers.  Upon  this 
practical  foundation  rested  and  still  rests  the 
power  of  Venizelos  in  Greece. 

The  effect  of  Venizelos's  change  of  front  was 
to  consolidate  instantly  all  elements  opposed  to 
the  conservative  government  under  Premier 
Skouloudis.     A  complete  lack  of  political  instinct 

193 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  a  certain  furtiveness  of  policy  in  Stephan 
Skouloudis  had  succeeded  in  increasing  the  nor- 
mal Venizelist  strength  throughout  the  country 
by  an  appreciable  number  of  political  malcon- 
tents.    To  these  might  be  added  the  bulk  of  the 
refugees  from  Thrace  and  Asia  Minor  who  had 
congregated  in  Greece  to  await  the  outcome  of 
the  war.     Venizelos's  program  of  a  still  gi*eater 
Greece  naturally  appealed  to  them,  since  it  meant 
the  incorporation  of  their  homes  in  the  Greek 
state.     There  were  several  hundreds   of  thou- 
sands of  these  refugees  throughout  the  country, 
mostly  without  resources.  Many  of  these  eagerly 
sought  and  obtained  well  paid  employment  in 
the  Venizelist  organization.     Indeed,  later,  when 
Venizelos   attempted  to   organize  his   followers 
into  an  army,  it  was  largely  upon  this  element, 
not  upon  the  genuine  Greek  population,  that  he 
drew  for  the  nondescript,  undisciplined  force  he 
succeeded  in  gathering  together.     Their  enlist- 
ment with  the  revolutionary  "army"  was  like 
their  allegiance  to  the  Venizelist  cause,  a  ques- 
tion of  bread.    Their  sole  alternative  was  to  join 
Venizelos  or  starve.     They  joined  Venizelos. 
In  addition  to  these  refugees,  a  small  but  very 
194 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

Avell-to-do  group  of  Egyptian  Greeks  filled  the 
best  hotels  of  Athens.  By  association  and  for 
business  reasons  thoroughly  pro-English,  they 
contributed  heavily  to  the  well-filled  Venizelist 
coffers,  in  the  hope  of  receiving  honors  or  con- 
tracts at  the  hands  of  the  Cretan  when  he  should 
again  become  prime  minister  of  Greece.  Even 
the  American  minister  made  no  secret  of  his  Ve- 
nizelist sympathies,  not  only  while  the  Cretan 
remained  in  Athens,  but  after  he  had  left  the 
capital  on  a  mission  of  undisguised  sedition. 

The  popular  strength  resisting  this  hetero- 
geneous opposition  to  the  existing  Government 
was  composed  of  the  Greeks  of  old  Greece, — 
peasant  proprietors,  solid  business  men,  skilled 
artisans,  and  the  professional  classes, — the  kind 
of  people  who  make  up  the  conservative  element 
in  any  country.  The  former  had  everything  to 
gain  and  nothing  to  lose  by  war ;  the  latter,  every- 
thing to  lose  and  nothing  to  gain.  King  Con- 
stantine's  problem,  to  move  the  conservative 
element  to  accept  and  support  war,  was  not  only 
an  essential  one  if  the  country  was  to  be  united 
in  its  cooperation  with  the  Allies,  but  a  very  dif- 
ficult one,  requiring  every  assistance  of  under- 

'  See  Appendix  3. 

195 


( 

']  CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

/ 
standing  and  latitude  from  the  Entente  authori- 
ties themselves.  His  was  not  a  sentimental,  but 
an  actual,  problem.  The  Entente,  true  to  their 
policy  of  sentimentality  in  the  near  East,  not  only 
failed  to  appreciate  the  magnitude  of  the  task, 
but  put  every  possible  difficulty  in  King  Con- 
sta,ntine's  way. 

To  prepare  the  ground  for  emerging  from 
neutrality,  the  king  called  General  JMoscopou- 
los,  in  command  of  the  Greek  forces  in  Mace- 
donia, from  Saloniki  to  go  over  with  him  the  kind 
of  military  cooperation  desired  of  Greece  by  the 
Entente.  In  nominal  fulfilment  of  the  En- 
tente's desire  for  a  demobilization  of  the  Greek 
Macedonian  forces,  a  fourth  of  the  men  and  of- 
ficers were  granted  leave  of  absence  to  return  to 
their  homes,  ostensibly  for  spring  planting. 
They  were  still  held,  however,  in  the  national 
service  and  subject  to  a  moment's  call.  General 
Dousmanis,  chief  of  the  Greek  staff,  elaborated 
a  plan  of  concentration  of  the  Greek  troops  that 
would  place  the  Greek  army  at  the  strategical 
point  where  it  could  be  of  most  assistance  to  the 
Allies.  This  he  altered  from  day  to  day  with  the 
shifting  of  the  Allied  or  their  enemies'  forces. 

196 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

The  British  mlHtary  attache,  Sir  Thomas  Cun- 
ningham, who  had  worked  with  General  Dous- 
manis  to  this  end,  was  recalled  "for  being  too 
closely  connected  with  the  Greek  staff"! 

To  prepare  public  opinion  for  ultimate  Greek 
cooperation  with  the  Entente,  some  of  the  king's 
closest  advisers  undertook  to  inspire  the  govern- 
ment press  to  play  up  every  incursion  of  Bul- 
garian troops  beyond  the  Greek  frontiers,  every 
raid  of  comitadjis  into  Greek  territory,  and 
every  incident  between  the  Greek  and  Bulgarian 
frontier  guards.^ 

^Mien  this  work  was  well  under  way.  General 
Sir  Bryan  ^Nlahon,  the  British  commanding  officer 
in  Saloniki,  visited  Athens;  and  in  several  talks 
with  the  king,  his  closest  adviser.  Prince  Nicho- 
las, and  the  English  Princess  Ahce  of  Battenberg, 
an  exceedingly  clever  woman,  with  a  very  clear 
view  of  the  situation,  he  assisted  King  Constan- 
tine  to  persuade  the  less  warlike  of  his  supporters 
by  furnishing  him  with  further  arguments  in  the 
shape  of  details  of  the  Entente  force,  equipment, 

1  Thus  on  March  11  a  great  stir  was  made  in  the  government 
organs  over  the  arrest  by  the  Bulgars  of  a  Greek  soldier  who 
had  inadvertently  crossed  the  frontier;  and  three  Greek  regi- 
ments were  rushed  to  Drama  to  be  ready  should  this  incident 
be  fixed  upon  as  the  spark  necessary  to  set  the  war-fire  alight. 

197 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  impregnable  military  position  at  Saloniki. 
At  the  same  time  General  Mahon  advised  the 
Greek  monarch  that  the  question  of  an  Alhed 
offensive  in  Macedonia  was  up  for  discussion,  and 
would  probably  be  settled  by  the  Allied  war 
council  then  in  session  in  Paris. 

"While  King  Constantine  was  thus  employed  in 
laying  the  ground  for  joining  the  Entente,  every 
circumstance  seemed  to  be  working  against  that 
end.  The  Allies  in  Saloniki  seized  and  occupied 
the  Greek  fort  at  Dova  Tepe,  northeast  of  Lake 
Doiran,  one  of  the  most  important  Greek  fron- 
tier strongholds.  Following  the  occupation  of 
Fort  Karabournou,  this  seizure  created  an  un- 
happy impression  in  the  military  circle  of  Athens. 
The  westward  extension  of  the  Allied  lines  across 
the  Vardar  River  brought  their  positions  into  a 
country  infested  with  malaria,  and  Sarrail  was 
forced  to  send  shipload  after  shipload  of  his 
force  to  France  for  convalescence  in  another  cli- 
mate. To  outward  appearances  also,  albeit  the 
French  were  holding  at  Verdun,  the  German  at- 
tack was  taxing  their  resources  to  the  utmost.  It 
was  scarcely  possible  to  dream  of  an  Allied  of- 
fensive, necessarily  largely  dependent  upon  the 

198 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

French,  in  INIacedonia.  King  Constantine  might 
be  as  ready  as  he  pleased  to  join  the  Allies;  there 
^\^s  no  prospect  of  accomplishing  more  by  such  a 
course  than  to  increase  the  expense  of  maintain- 
ing the  Allied  Orient  armies  on  a  war-footing  to 
no  immediate  practical  end.  For  such  negligible 
sen^ice  as  that  King  Constantine  was  never  pre- 
pared to  risk  throwing  his  country  into  war. 

The  two  classes  of  those  in  Athens  who  were 
opposed  to  a  military  accord  between  the  king 
and  General  Sarrail,  moreover,  were  as  busily  at 
work  as  the  sovereign  himself.  On  the  part  of 
the  Entente  diplomatists,  the  Anglo-French 
secret  poMce,  operating  from  the  respective  lega- 
tions, continued  to  inspire  arrests  of  Austrians, 
Germans,  and  Greeks,  whom  they  charged  with 
espionage.  An  insignificant  incident  at  Candia, 
in  Crete,  gave  the  British  naval  authorities  an 
excuse  to  seize  Suda  Bay,  the  best  naval  base 
in  the  eastern  Mediterranean,  to  secure  posses- 
sion of  which  had  been  the  underlying  motive  of 
years  of  international  intrigue  by  which  the 
island  of  Crete  had  been  kept  from  joining 
the  Greek  parent  state. ^     Shortly  afterward  the 

1  Former  French  minister  for  Foreign  AflPairs,  M.  Gabriel  Han- 

199 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Greek  port  of  Argostoli,  on  the  Ionian  coast,  was 
also  seized  as  a  base  for  the  Allied  naval  opera- 
tions.    These  encroachments  upon  Greece  left 
no  little  irritation  in  the  popular  mind.     But  in- 
side the  government  circles  a  more  important 
matter  was  the  financial  difficulties  in  which  the 
country  now  found  itself  from  prolonged  mobili- 
zation.    Roughly,  the  mobilization  of  the  Greek 
army   was   running   the   Government   to    some 
$180,000  per  diem.     The  Greek  deficit  for  1915 
had  been  in  the  neighborhood  of  $36,000,000. 
By  the  end  of  March,  1916,  it  had  reached  $75,- 
000,000.     Greece  was  almost  at  the  end  of  her 
financial    string.     The    Entente    ministers    in 
Athens  welcomed  this  new  difficulty  of  the  Skou- 
loudis  government  as  an  additional  lever  to  force 

otaux,  nourished   no  illusions   as  to   England's  intentions  toward 
"Crete  witli  her  greatly  coveted  port,  Souda  Bay." 

"It  is  no  mystery  for  any  one  that  England  harbored  in  re- 
spect of  the  near  Eastern  question,  views  not  exactly  in  conform- 
ance with  those  of  her  partners." 

"It  were  impossible  to  overlook  a  fact  of  such  considerable 
importance  as  the  journey  of  Messrs.  Asquith  and  Winston  Church- 
ill and  their  meeting  in  the  island  of  Malta  with  General  Kitch- 
ener, and  the  announcement  of  the  reinforcement  of  the  British 
garrisons  in  Egypt,  Malta,  and  Gibraltar.  Those  who  are  familiar 
with  Mediterranean  politics  have  a  right  to  ask  whether  this  has 
not  something  to  do  with  'protecting'  Souda  Bay.  The  fate  of 
Crete  will  be  decided  as  a  consequence  ...  The  crux  of  the  situ- 
ation was  in  Crete." 

"La  Guerre  des  Balkans  et  TEurope,"  pp.  24,  28,  193,  295. 

200 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

the  return  of  Venizelos  to  power.  To  that  end 
they  tightened  the  purse-strings  of  their  govern- 
ments at  home  and  confidently  waited  the  issue. 
The  only  result  of  this  attitude,  however,  was  to 
force  the  resignation  of  INIinister  of  Finance 
Dragoumis,  an  able  man  of  the  highest  character 
and  former  premier  of  Greece. 

jNIeanwhile  Venizelos  and  his  followers  were 
still  more  active,  since  to  them  it  was  a  matter  of 
political  life  or  death.  No  sooner  had  Venizelos 
announced  his  change  of  policy  and  his  reentry 
into  the  political  arena  than  he  established  a  per- 
sonal organ  in  Athens,  the  weekly  "Herald,"  and 
planned  a  series  of  political  meetings  intended  to 
complete  the  Entente  ministers'  work  of  over- 
throwing the  Skouloudis  cabinet  by  attacking  its 
motives  and  those  of  the  king  from  press  and 
platform. 

On  April  2  the  first  number  of  the  "Herald" 
appeared.  It  contained  a  long  and  veiled  edi- 
torial from  the  pen  of  Venizelos  in  which  the 
patriotism  of  his  sovereign  was  assailed.  The 
secrecy  with  which  the  plan  of  making  an  open 
fight  upon  King  Constantine  was  guarded  is 
characteristic  of  the  Cretan's  methods.     Though 

201 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

he  had  promised  me  an  advance  copy  of  the  edi- 
torial in  question,  I  was  told  to  follow  him  from 
the  theater  without  joining  him  until,  in  a  dark 
square,  I  was  bidden  mount  into  a  closed  carriage 
with  him.  We  then  drove  together  to  the  office 
where  the  "Herald"  was  being  printed.  Here, 
while  Venizelos  sat,  screened  from  prying  eyes, 
in  one  corner  of  the  vehicle  and  I  in  another,  a 
proof  copy  of  the  paper  was  thrust  into  the  car- 
riage by  one  of  the  Cretan's  adherents.  The 
carriage  then  sought  a  secluded  spot,  where 
Venizelos  read  the  proofs  by  the  light  of  a  street 
lamp.  Finally  he  gave  them  to  me,  subsequently 
dropping  me  in  a  deserted  side  street,  far  from 
either  his  house  or  my  hotel.  The  whole  per- 
formance had  the  air  of  a  conspiracy,  which,  in- 
deed, it  was,  or  at  least  its  beginning. 

A  short  time  previously  I  had  had  a  long  talk 
with  Venizelos  and  he  had  gone  over  with  me 
again  his  relations  with  King  Constantine,  stat- 
ing categorically  his  thesis  that  "under  the  con- 
stitution the  King  of  the  Hellenes  is  merely  the 
highest  functionary  of  the  state,  paid  like  any 
other  functionary  to  perform  services  of  which 
the  limits  are  plainly  set  by  the  Constitution." 

2oa 


VENIZELOS  ATTACKS  HIS  KING 

He  charged  the  sovereign  with  violation  of  the 
Constitution,  and  when  1  quoted  those  articles 
which  seemed  to  confer  upon  King  Constantine 
the  power  he  had  exercised,  Venizelos  replied, 
"King  Constantine's  father  was  elected — hired, 
if  you  please — to  be  a  sort  of  hereditary  presiding 
officer  of  the  Greek  democracy,  without  other 
than  social  responsibilities." 

Unfortunately,  half  a  dozen  articles  of  the 
Greek  Constitution  do  not  bear  out  this  thesis/ 
Possibly  it  was  for  this  practical  reason  that 
Venizelos's  editorial  in  the  "Herald"  was  a  gen- 
eral review  of  what  he  termed  "the  shipwreck  of 
our  national  aspirations,"  and  that  greater  stress 
was  laid  on  what  Greece  might  have  reaped  by 
joining  the  Entente  in  the  way  of  territorial  ag- 
grandizement than  was  placed  upon  the  constitu- 
tionality of  King  Constantine's  course.  He  at- 
tacked the  royal  attitude  only  in  his  summing  up 
of  the  danger  to  Greece  of  a  German  victory 
and  a  gi-eater  Bulgaria.  "Politicians  who  do 
not  see  this  inevitable  danger,"  he  wrote,  "are 
blind,  and  unhappy  are  the  monarchs  who  follow 
such    advisors;    unhappier    still    the    countries 

1  See  appendix  2. 

203 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

whose  sovereigns  are  victims  of  such  counsel." 
The  significance  of  the  publication  of  this  at- 
tack on  the  king  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  revealed 
an  intent  to  render  Constantine  I,  despite  his 
undoubted  popularity,  personally  responsible  for 
the  failure  of  Greece  to  secure  vast  territorial 
advantages  by  Constantine's  refusal  to  exploit 
the  Entente's  need  of  military  assistance  in  the 
near  East.  It  demonstrated  that  an  attack  on 
the  throne  could  be  made  with  impunity  and  that 
fear  of  the  Entente  would  prevent  retaliatory 
measures  being  taken  by  the  constitutional  gov- 
ernment against  those  evidently  preparing  revo- 
lution. It  emboldened  the  followers  of  Venize- 
los  to  every  form  of  charge  against  the  motives 
and  person  of  the  sovereign  of  Greece.  Had  not 
this  first,  feeble  step  been  taken  with  success, 
Venizelos's  formation  of  a  revolutionarj^  govern- 
ment under  the  aegis  of  the  Allies  at  Saloniki 
would  have  been  impossible,  and  the  uprising  of 
December  1,  1916,  could  not  have  been  conceived. 
Above  all,  it  revealed  to  the  timid  among  the  fol- 
lowers of  Venizelos  that,  with  the  bayonets  of 
Sarrail  to  support  them,  and  the  guns  of  the 
Allied  fleet  to  cover  them,  they  could  plot  in 

security  what  revolution  they  liked. 

204 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   TRANSPORT    OF   THE   SERBS 

King  Constantine  declined  to  take  any  public 
notice  of  Venizelos's  attacks  upon  his  policy.  To 
me  he  simply  said : 

"Arguments  cannot  alter  the  attitude  of 
Greece.  It  is  based  on  facts;  only  new  facts 
can  change  it.  If  the  material  situation  in  the 
Balkans  so  shifts  that  the  interests  of  Greece 
appear  in  another  light  than  that  of  to-day,  no 
one,  least  of  all  I,  has  ever  said  that  Greece  will 
not  adapt  her  attitude  to  the  altered  circum- 
stances. Further  talking  and  writing  serve  only 
to  confuse  the  issue." 

The  change  in  the  material  situation  in  the 
Balkans  to  which  King  Constantine  had  refer- 
ence was  that  upon  which  he  had  laid  much 
stress  from  the  beginning;  namely,  that  the  En- 
tente at  last  decide  to  take  their  Balkan  opera- 
tions seriously  and  send  sufficient  force  and  war 
material  to  JNIacedonia  to  prosecute  a  successful 

205 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

offensive  campaign.  But  the  Greek  sovereign 
might  say  what  he  pleased  about  confusion  to  the 
issue  by  talking  and  writing;  neither  Venizelos 
nor  his  followers  proposed  for  a  moment  to  re- 
frain. Emboldened  by  the  success  with  which  he 
had  opened  his  first  attack  upon  the  throne  in  the 
"Herald,"  Venizelos  at  once  began  a  series  of 
public  meetings  also,  with  the  purpose  of  arraign- 
ing the  Skouloudis  cabinet  and  at  the  same  time 
covertly  undermining  Constantine  I  as  head  of 
the  Greek  army,  the  well-spring  of  that  sover- 
eign's vast  popularity  •  with  the  Greek  people. 
To  this  end  the  Cretan  adopted  the  contention 
that  the  Greek  monarch's  policy  was  nothing  less 
than  an  assertion  of  the  doctrine  of  the  divine 
right  of  kings. 

"Here  in  Greece,"  he  said  to  me,  "we  are  con- 
fronted with  the  question  of  whether  we  have  a 
democracy  presided  over  by  a  king,  or  whether  at 
this  hour  in  our  history  we  must  subscribe  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings.  The  mo- 
ment has  come  when  the  position  of  the  highest 
functionary,  which  every  King  of  the  Hellenes 
ought  to  occupy,  must  be  so  strictly  defined  that 
it  will  be  forever  impossible  to  raise  again  the 

206 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

question  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  in  Greece." 
Whether  any  one  save  Venizelos  himself  had 
ever  raised  the  question  of  the  divine  right  of 
kings  in  Greece  is  seriously  open  to  doubt.  Cer- 
tainly, seven  years  previously,  during  the  Revo- 
lution of  1909,  he  had  had  in  his  own  hands  the 
opportunity  to  alter  the  fundamental  law  of 
Greece  in  any  sense  he  liked.  The  people 
clamored  for  a  constitutional  assembly,  and 
Venizelos  literally  shouted  them  down  in  the 
great  meeting  in  Constitution  Square.  At  that 
time  King  George  was  just  the  figurehead  that 
the  Cretan  now  desired  to  see  upon  the  throne  of 
Hellas;  and  Venizelos  then,  conserving  in  the 
crown  every  reactionary  power  laid  down  in  the 
first  Greek  charter,  had  wielded  in  the  name  of 
the  king  an  absolute  authority.  What  had  up- 
set his  political  calculations  of  seven  years  be- 
fore was  the  accession  to  the  Hellenic  throne  of 
a  man  capable  and  willing  to  discharge  in  his  own 
name  and  on  his  own  responsibility  the  powers 
conferred  upon  the  King  of  the  Hellenes — 
powers  that  Venizelos  had  carefully  kept  in  the 
Constitution  with  a  view  to  administering  them 
himself. 

207 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

It  was  precisely  this  exercise  of  his  constitu- 
tional rights  by  King  Constantine  which  had  been 
the  undoing  of  Venizelos's  ambitions.  The  Cre- 
tan's reasoning  was,  therefore,  that  the  powers 
vested  in  the  crown  were  proper  powers  when  in 
the  hands  of  a  weak  sovereign,  improper  ones  in 
the  hands  of  a  capable  ruler.  The  lack  of  logic 
in  this  attitude  did  not  trouble  him. 

"It  has  never  been  my  habit,"  he  wrote  General 
Corakas  some  months  later,  "to  base  my  calcula- 
tions on  purely  logical  and  historical  grounds,  but 
rather  upon  the  principle  of  psychological  reac- 
tions, of  general  impressions,  however  vague  they 
may  be,  and  upon  the  law  of  force  and  of  domi- 
nation which  is  stronger  than  all  laws  written  or 
unwritten."  ^ 

Nevertheless,  he  did  not  advocate  the  establish- 
ment of  a  republic  in  Greece.  "The  habits  of 
ages  of  slavery  through  which  the  Greek  people 
have  passed,"  he  said,  "are  still  too  strong.  The 
conscious  exercise  of  the  responsibilities  and  privi- 
leges of  a  republic  cannot  spring  into  being  in  a 
moment  with  any  people."  In  a  word,  Venize- 
los  quietly  proposed  a  dictatorship  for  Greece, 
with  himself  as  dictator. 

1  Appendix  6. 

208 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

To  attain  this  end,  he  must  first  overthrow  the 
Skouloudis  government  and  return  to  power  as 
prime  minister  of  Greece.  He  accordingly  at- 
tacked, in  the  "Herald"  and  in  the  public  meet- 
ings which  began  at  once,  both  the  Government 
and  the  elections  by  which  the  Government  had 
secured  its  majority  in  the  Boule — those  elections 
of  December  19,  1915,  in  which  he  had  refused  to 
allow  any  of  his  followers  to  take  part.  He 
called  them  a  "burlesque  of  the  free  exercise  of 
the  right  of  suffrage,"  a  "farcical  formality,"  and 
a  "sinister  comedy."  "The  present  Government 
of  Greece,"  he  declared  to  me,  "is  therefore  in  no 
wise  representative."  He  referred  to  his  par- 
tizans  as  "a  majority  of  the  Greek  people,"  and 
on  the  whole,  having  refused  to  participate  in  the 
last  elections,  he  now  made  a  great  clamor  for 
new  elections,  which  he  felt  confident  he  could 
carry. 

All  of  this  internal  uproar  interfered  greatly 
with  King  Constantine's  purpose  of  preparing 
the  way  for  an  ultimate  military  accord  with 
General  Sarrail.  That  of  course  was  exactly  the 
aim  of  the  Venizelists,  who  redoubled  tlieir  efforts 
to  confuse  the  issue  when  General  Sarrail  decided 

209 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  call  what  remained  of  the  Serbian  army  from 
Corfu  to  Saloniki  to  take  part  in  the  general 
hostilities.  At  the  time,  there  were  in  Saloniki, 
roughly,  some  80,000  French  and  120,000  British. 
A  Serbian  army  of  75,000  would  bring  the  total 
available  force  in  Macedonia  up  to  275,000  men, 
albeit  by  no  means  as  many  bayonets.  With 
250,000  Greeks,  however.  King  Constantine 
figured  that  the  required  half-million  would  be 
certain,  and  that  a  Balkan  offensive  with  at  least 
some  chance  of  success  could  be  undertaken. 

Lest  this  result  should  be  achieved  and  their 
hopes  of  return  to  power  (and  proximity  to  the 
treasury)  be  dashed,  the  followers  of  Venizelos 
were  forced  to  find  some  way  to  embroil  the  situ- 
ation in  Greece  before  the  transport  of  the  Serbs 
to  Macedonia  could  be  effected. 

The  occasion  required  presented  itself  in  the 
very  problem  of  the  means  of  transporting  the 
Serbs  from  Corfu.  Rested  after  the  incredible 
fatigues  of  their  retreat  through  Albania,  re- 
fitted, the  "third  ban"  (those  too  old  or  too  worn 
to  be  of  any  fighting  value)  weeded  out,  the  75,- 
000  remaining  of  an  original  Serbian  army  of 
300,000  was  at  last  in  shape  to  begin  a  third  effort 

210 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

to  rid  their  native  soil  of  the  invader.  JNIean- 
while,  however,  owing  to  the  activity  of  the  Ger- 
man submarines  in  the  ^Mediterranean,  water 
transport  was  becoming  exceeding!}^  perilous. 
The  Allied  fleet  seemed  unable  to  cope  with  the 
problem  with  any  definite  result,  and  the  loss  of 
vessels  every  few  days  presaged  ill  for  the  Ser- 
bian army,  should  it  be  necessary  to  transport  it 
by  sea. 

All  of  this  the  Serbs  brought  to  the  attention 
of  their  greater  Allies.  They  pointed  out  that 
their  reduced  numbers  were  a  result  of  the  failure 
of  France  and  England,  in  fulfilment  of  a  defi- 
nite promise,  to  send  the  necessary  150,000  men 
to  their  rescue  in  November,  1915.  They  re- 
called the  fact  that  they  had  twice  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  European  War  been  offered  fa- 
vorable terms  for  a  separate  peace  by  Austria- 
Hungary,  and  that  twice  their  gi-eater  Allies  had 
prevented  acceptance  by  making  promises  that 
had  not  been  fulfilled.  They  declared  that  they 
were  willing  to  fight  to  the  last  man,  but  that  they 
could  see  no  reason  why  they  should  drown  as  the 
Montenegrins  had  drowned,  because  the  power 
that  claimed  to  rule  the  wave  seemed  unable  to 

211 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

rule  the  deep.  In  the  representations  of  the 
Serbs  were  combined  a  resentment  for  the  En- 
tente poHcy  of  friendship  towards  Bulgaria, 
anger  over  the  needless  sacrifice  that  had  been 
made  of  them  by  the  Entente's  dilatory  tactics  in 
the  near  East,  and  some  rancor  still  remaining 
from  the  way  they  had  been  deprived  of  an  outlet 
on  the  sea  by  the  greater  powers  during  the  nego- 
tiations following  the  wars  of  1912  and  1913. 

There  was  so  much  justice  in  the  observations 
of  the  Serbs  that  the  Entente  Governments  were 
disposed  to  do  what  they  could  to  content  their 
unhappy  allies.  A  glance  at  the  map  revealed  a 
railroad  across  Greece  from  Patras  to  the  Piraeus 
and  from  the  Piraeus  by  way  of  Athens  to  Salon- 
iki,  with  only  a  brief  gap  near  Ekaterina  still 
under  constrirction.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  Allied 
military  authorities  considered  for  a  moment 
what  it  would  mean  to  the  Greeks  to  have 
their  railway  system  tied  up  for  two  months  or 
more  for  military  purposes.  The  Greeks  had 
already  accepted  so  many  demands,  had  borne 
with  forbearance  so  much  that  was  contrarj^  to 
international  law  as  well  as  to  the  Greek  Consti- 
tution, that  the  Allied  diplomatists  in  Greece 

212 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

scarcely  expected  any  opposition  to  one  more 
infraction  of  Article  XCIX  of  the  Greek  charter. 
Nor,  indeed,  in  all  probability,  would  there  have 
been  any  except  for  the  stir  the  Venizelists  made 
over  the  matter,  and  the  manner  in  which  the 
question  was  broached  by  the  Entente  to  the 
Greek  Government. 

On  April  12,  the  Entente  ministers  in  Athens 
announced  their  intention  to  transport  the  Ser- 
bian army  across  Greece,  exactly  as  on  August 
3,  1915,  they  had  announced  their  intention  to 
give  eastern  jNIacedonia  to  Bulgaria,  or  as  they 
had  announced  their  intention  on  December  27, 
1915,  to  employ  Corfu  as  a  refitment  camp  for 
the  broken  Serbian  armies.  Only  a  complete 
ignorance  or  a  supreme  indifference  to  the  psy- 
chology^ of  the  Greeks  could  have  dictated  a  fur- 
ther continuation  of  this  method  of  diplomatic 
procedure.  Easily  persuaded,  the  Greeks  are 
with  difficult}^  driven.     It  was  so  in  this  instance. 

There  were,  however,  other  elements  in  the 
situation.  The  Allied  occupation  of  Suda  Bay 
and  Argostoli  as  naval  bases  left  a  considerable 
uneasiness  in  the  minds  of  the  Greeks  as  to  the 
extent  to  which  the  Allies'  pretensions  to  the  use 

213 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  Greek  territory  outside  Macedonia  might  go. 
So  deep  was  this  feehng  that  Sir  Francis  EHiot 
was  forced  to  make  a  pubhc  statement  to  the 
effect  that  the  Entente  "were  asking  of  Greece 
no  more  than  mihtary  necessity  required."  The 
Greeks  could  not  see,  besides,  why  the  fact  that 
the  greater  powers  had  treated  the  Serbs  shabbily 
should  cause  hardship  to  be  visited  upon  Hellas, 
or  why  Greece  should  suffer  to  make  up  for  the 
deficiencies  in  the  Allied  operations  against  Ger- 
man submarines. 

But  the  deciding  cause  of  the  Skouloudis  gov- 
ernment's refusal  to  countenance  the  transport 
of  the  Serbs  across  Greece  was  the  fear  that  the 
presence  in  and  about  Athens  of  so  large  a  force 
of  Serbs  would  be  seized  by  the  Venizelists  as  the 
moment  to  effect  a  couj)  d'etat,  overturning  the 
constitutional  government,  perhaps  even  dethron- 
ing King  Constantine.  Already  there  were  in 
Athens  a  large  number  of  Serbian  refugees  who 
had  exhibited  a  lively  interest  in  Venizelos's  cam- 
paign for  the  entry  of  Greece  into  the  war  in  ful- 
filment of  the  Greco-Serbian  alliance,  as  Venize- 
los  interpreted  that  document.  Having  lost 
everything,  they  were  in  a  mood  to  undertake 

214 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

anything.  Their  presence  in  the  Greek  capital 
had  long  been  a  source  of  ill  ease  to  the  Govern- 
ment. 

It  was  generally  known  in  Athens,  also,  that 
the  Venizelists  at  this  time  were  arming  them- 
selves and  storing  in  their  homes  ammunition  ob- 
tained largely  from  France.  No  concealment 
was  made  of  the  fact.  The  Entente's  announce- 
ment of  their  intention  to  transport  the  Serbian 
army  across  Greece  became  known  at  a  moment 
when  the  Venizehst  attack  upon  the  Skouloudis 
government  was  at  its  height  and  abuse  of  King 
Constantine  was  bitterest.  So  much  partizan 
feeling  had  already  been  engendered  that  imagi- 
nation, run  riot  as  is  so  often  the  case  in  the  near 
East,  predicted  the  most  fantastic  events  for  the 
hour  when  the  Serbs  should  reach  Athens. 

INIoreover,  the  Greek  staff  declared  that,  with 
the  roadbeds  of  the  Greek  railways  in  their  ill- 
kept  state  and  a  lack  of  rolling  stock  due  to 
General  Sarrail's  seizure  of  all  the  rolling  stock 
waiting  in  Saloniki  the  completion  of  the  Athens- 
Saloniki  railway,  it  would  require  nearer  three 
than  two  months  to  move  the  Serbian  army  across 
the  country.     During  this  time  not  only  would 

215 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

virtually  all  regular  traffic  in  Greece  be  sus- 
pended, but  the  Greek  army,  a  large  part  of 
which  was  still  mobilized  and  scattered  over  the 
entire  country,  would  be  left  without  communi- 
cations with  its  various  bases  of  supphes.  On 
paper  the  question  of  the  transport  of  the  Serbs 
appeared  easy  enough  to  those  discussing  it  in 
London  and  Paris ;  in  practice,  it  was  almost  im- 
possible, fraught  as  it  was  with  complications  in 
the  internal  hfe  of  Greece. 

At  this  crisis,  the  Boule,  which  alone  could  pass 
the  law  required  by  the  Constitution  to  permit  a 
foreign  army  to  traverse  Greek  soil,  adjourned. 
On  April  25,  Sir  Francis  Elliot  and  M.  Guille- 
min  waited  upon  King  Constantine,  and  a  stormy 
interview  resulted.  The  Greek  monarch's  posi- 
tion was  simplicity  itself.  He  sincerely  believed 
that  the  very  sovereignty  of  Greece  was  at  stake 
in  this  matter.  He  had  reason  to  know  that  the 
Venizelists  were  planning  a  coup  d'etat  with  the 
assistance  of  the  Serbs,  and  while  he  had  no  doubt 
on  the  score  of  how  such  an  attempt  would  end, 
he  felt  that  he  not  only  had  no  right  to  risk  an 
abortive  revolution  with  perhaps  fighting  in  the 
streets  of  Athens  itself,  but  that  it  was  his  duty 

216 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

as  head  of  the  state  and  commander-in-chief  of 
the  Hellenic  armies  to  avoid,  by  every  means  in 
his  power,  such  a  threatening  prospect  for  the 
peace  of  his  country.  This  view  he  exposed  to 
the  two  diplomatists,  refusing  at  the  same  time, 
categorically,  to  consent  to  the  transport  of  the 
Serbs. 

The  British  and  French  ministers  were  equally 
stubborn,  declaring  that  the  Entente  would 
transport  the  Serbian  army  across  the  country 
with  or  without  the  consent  of  King  Constantine 
and  his  ministers.  The  conference  ended  with 
no  conclusion  reached.  That  same  night,  as  if  in 
support  of  the  king's  contention,  an  attempt  was 
made  to  blow  up  the  Bulgarian  legation  in 
Athens  by  two  bombs  which,  upon  examination, 
were  found  to  be  regular  Serbian  army  bombs, 
made  in  England. 

"While  the  discussion  of  the  land  transport  of 
the  Serbs  continued,  the  water  transport  was  un- 
der way.  Venizelos  and  his  followers  took  up 
the  Serbian  side  and  further  embittered  feeling 
in  Greece  by  attacking  King  Constantine  on  this 
new  count,  despite  the  fact  that  this  time  the 
Greek  sovereign  stood  unquestionably  on  the  side 

217 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  the  Constitution.  There  was  one  element  of 
possible  conciliation:  Rear  Admiral  Hubert  S. 
Cardale,  the  acting  head  of  the  British  naval  mis- 
sion in  Greece,  who  had  fought  with  the  Serbs 
during  the  second  Austrian  invasion  and  stood 
exceedingly  well  with  them,^  and  who,  during 
some  five  years  of  residence  in  Greece,  had  been 
able  to  remain  on  excellent  terms  with  both  King 
Constantine  and  Venizelos.  It  is  possible  that  he 
might  have  arranged  a  matter  now  embroiled  far 
out  of  proportion  to  its  real  significance.  Just 
as  a  short  time  before  the  British  military  attache 
in  Athens  had  been  recalled  for  being  on  cordial 
terms  of  cooperation  with  the  Greek  staff,  so  now 
Admiral  Cardale  was  also  recalled.  The  British 
policy  in  Greece  seemed  dictated  not  by  the  cir- 
cumstances but  merely  b}'  extreme  reaction  from 
the  British  policy  pursued  in  Bulgaria.  Any 
one  in  the  least  able  to  appreciate  the  point  of 
view  of  the  Greek  Government  was  considered 
suspicious  and  at  once  got  rid  of. 

In  all  of  these  negotiations  the  Greek  view  of 
the  situation  was  ignored  as  of  no  consequence. 

1  He  was  decorated  for  distinguished  bravery  with  the  Order 
of  Crni  Gjorgje,  a  Serbian  order  corresponding  to,  the  Victoria 
Cross. 

S18 


THE  TRANSPORT  OF  THE  SERBS 

That  Greece  was  at  peace  and  straining  every 
nerve  to  remain  at  peace  was  never  even  consid- 
ered.    That  King  Constantine  was  seeking  to 
keep  his  country  united  against  a  violent  attempt 
from  within  the  state  to  disrupt  it — an  attempt 
countenanced  and  supported  by  the  Entente — 
was  regarded  as  mere  stubbornness  on  the  part 
of  the  Greek  sovereign.     The  only  thing  that 
counted  was  that  the  plans  of  the  Entente  should 
not  be  interfered  with  by  Greece's  neutrality  or 
any  effort  of  the  Greeks  toward  national  self- 
preservation.     It  is  this  that  gives  the  matter  of 
the  transport  of  the  Serbs  its  significance.     The 
Serbian  army  arrived  in  Saloniki  by  water  safely 
enough.     But  the  fact  that  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment had  dared  to  refuse  a  demand  of  the  En- 
tente was  regarded  as  setting  a  dangerous  prece- 
dent.    The  policy  of  Great  Britain  and  France, 
— for  in   all   of  this   neither   Russia   nor   Italy 
shared, — it  was  felt,  must  be  altered  at  once  so 
that  in  future  no  opposition  to  the   Entente's 
wishes   could   develop.     To    do   this,    Venizelos 
must  be  returned  to  power  once  more,  whatever 
the   Greek   people   might   desire   and   whatever 
means  might  be  necessary  to  employ  to  accom- 

219 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

plish  that  end.  And  Venizelos's  continuance  in 
power  must  be  secured  by  such  measures  of  Alhed 
control  in  Greece  as  to  ehminate  the  expression 
of  any  adverse  sentiment. 

In  a  word,  as  King  Constantine  had  foreseen, 
the  sovereignty  of  the  Greek  people  was  indeed 
at  stake. 


220 


CHAPTER  XIV 

FORT   RUPEL 

The  by-elections  in  Chios,  Lesbos,  and  eastern 
Macedonia  early  in  ]May  resulted,  as  had  been 
expected,  in  a  complete  victory  for  the  Venize- 
lists:  Elephtherios  Venizelos  himself  was  elected, 
without  opposition,  in  Lesbos.  Even  in  eastern 
Macedonia,  part  of  which  Venizelos,  when  prime 
minister,  had  tried  to  turn  over  to  Bulgaria,  Con- 
stantine  Jordanou,  a  Venizehst,  carried  the  coun- 
try by  a  small  majority.  Throughout  newer 
Greece,  come  under  Greek  rule  only  since  the 
Turkish  war  of  1912,  Venizelos's  pohcy  of  fur- 
ther increasing  the  size  of  Greece  by  accretions 
in  Asia  Minor  and  Thrace  appealed  to  the  people. 
jNIany  of  them  had  relatives,  property,  or  inter- 
ests in  Asia  Minor  and  Thrace.  They  wished  to 
see  their  friends  and  families  freed  of  Turkish 
rule;  what  might  happen  to  Greece  as  a  result  of 
so  large  an  increase  in  alien  population — an  an- 
nexation of  territory  extensively   inhabited   by 

221 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Mussulmans  as  well  as  by  Greeks — was  a  matter 
of  indifference.  A  Cretan  himself,  but  a  short 
time  in  touch  with  any  of  the  life  or  ideals  of  Old 
Greece,  Venizelos  understood  only  this  point  of 
view;  he  never  appreciated  that  of  the  Greeks 
proper.  It  was,  therefore,  among  the  newer 
Greeks  that  he  counted  and  still  counts  his  sup- 
porters. 

But  while  eager  enough  to  see  Greece  vastly 
increased  in  size  through  a  general  Allied  victory, 
the  inhabitants  of  the  islands  and  eastern  Mace- 
donia shared  the  reluctance  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Old  Greece  to  accomplish  this  result  by  their  own 
unaided  efforts.  When,  therefore,  immediately 
following  elections  in  which  the  majority  of  the 
voters  had  supported  Venizelos's  policy  of  a  still 
greater  Greece,  the  Bulgarians  began  prepara- 
tions to  invade  eastern  Macedonia,  the  inhabi- 
tants of  eastern  Macedonia  were  less  pleased  with 
the  prospect. 

Meanwhile,  the  least  conspicuous  and  most 
effective  of  the  Entente  pressures  put  upon  the 
Skouloudis  government,  to  force  its  resignation, 
was  having  a  marked  effect.  The  financial  situ- 
ation of  the  country  was  exceedingly  precarious, 

222 


FORT  RUPEL 

and  the  refusal  by  France  and  England  to  let  the 
Skouloudis  cabinet  obtain  any  monies  abroad  put 
the  Government  in  a  desperate  case.  For  this 
reason  during  the  by-elections,  while  the  Venize- 
lists  disposed  of  unlimited  funds,  lavishly  spent, 
the  conservatives  were  unable  to  meet  the  ordi- 
nary campaign  expenses,  which  are,  in  Greece, 
proportionately  greater  even  than  in  the  United 
States.  The  payments  due  the  army  had  been 
in  arrears  for  some  time,  and  the  sums  which  the 
families  of  mobilized  men  should  have  received 
had  never  been  paid  since  the  mobilization  had 
begun.  Cut  off  from  the  possibility  of  securing 
money  from  abroad,  Finance  INIinister  Rhallys, 
therefore,  executed  an  arrangement  with  the 
National  Bank  of  Greece  for  a  loan  of  one  hun- 
dred fifteen  million  drachma?  (some  $23,000,000) 
calculated  to  produce  a  hundred  million  drach- 
mae for  the  Government's  use.  Thirty  million 
of  this  amount  was  to  be  obtained  by  an  addi- 
tional issue  of  paper  currency  which  the  specie 
reserve  of  Greece  fully  justified,  but  wliich  the 
indebtedness  of  Greece  rendered,  possibly,  a  risky 
financial  operation.  Tlie  Greek  Government, 
however,  had  no  choice. 

223 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  proposed  convention  with  the  National 
Bank  upset  the  financial  interests  in  France  and 
England  at  once.  Both  countries  had  financed 
Greece  for  years  and  both  realized  fully  the  ad- 
vantages which  their  financial  hold  on  the  coun- 
try gave  them  in  development  of  their  trade  with 
Greece  as  well  as,  in  times  like  the  present,  when 
financial  pressure  could  be  brought  to  bend  the 
Greek  Government  to  meet  the  political  wishes 
of  the  two  larger  powers.  The  Entente  mem- 
bers of  the  International  Financial  Commission, 
therefore,  fought  the  conclusion  of  the  projected 
arrangement  with  the  National  Bank  with  every 
means.  Nevertheless,  the  convention  was  signed. 
The  prospect  of  its  ratification,  and  the  conse- 
quent escape  for  Greece  from  their  financial  grip, 
hastened  the  decision  of  France  and  England  to 
employ  drastic  measures  in  dealing  with  Greece. 

The  water  transport  of  the  Serbs  was  well  on 
the  way  to  completion.  The  Entente  diploma- 
tists had  lost  their  fight  to  force  the  Skouloudis 
cabinet  to  permit  a  transport  by  land.  Politi- 
cally, this  was  a  check  to  the  Allies  in  Greece; 
financially,  the  convention  between  the  Skou- 
loudis government  and  the  National  Bank  was    ^ 

2M 


FORT  RUPEL 

another  check.  ^lihtarily,  the  failure  of  the 
Serbian  adventure  and  almost  eight  months'  in- 
activity of  General  Sarrail's  army  in  ^Macedonia 
were  also  prejudicial  to  Entente  prestige  in  the 
near  East.  Every  consideration  pointed  to  some 
sweeping  change  of  policy  on  the  part  of  the 
Entente  to  regain  the  lost  ground. 

Two  courses  were  possible :  to  cease  supporting 
Venizelos  and  the  politicians  and  reach  an  agree- 
ment with  King  Constantine  and  the  Greek 
general  staff  for  the  military  cooperation  of 
Greece  with  the  Allies ;  or  to  seek  by  force  to  turn 
out  the  Skouloudis  government,  demand  new 
elections  and  provide  Venizelos  with  every  sup- 
port to  enable  him  to  win  them.  The  results  in 
Chios,  Lesbos,  and  eastern  INIacedonia  convinced 
the  Entente  diplomatists  that  Venizelos  would 
sweep  the  country.  They  therefore  chose  the 
latter  course. 

From  the  moment  General  Sarrail  assumed 
supreme  command  of  the  Allied  Orient  armies 
and  the  Greeks  completed  their  evacuation  of 
Saloniki,  General  Moscopoulos,-  the  Greek  com- 
mander in  Macedonia,  had  urged  the  French  to 
extend  their  lines  to  the  east  of  the  Struma  River 

225 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  to  take  effective  control  of  the  Greek  points 
of  strategic  importance  in  that  sector.^  He  ex- 
plained repeatedly  that  the  Greeks,  cut  off  from 
their  base  of  supplies  at  Saloniki,  partially  de- 
mobilized at  the  insistence  of  the  Allies,  and  de- 
pendent upon  an  open  roadstead  as  a  port,  were 
in  no  position  to  resist  successfully  a  strong  at- 
tack from  the  north.  Instead  of  extending  his 
line,  however,  General  Sarrail  had  further  em- 
phasized the  isolation  of  the  Greeks  by  destroying 
the  Demir  Hissar  bridge,  two  and  a  half  miles 
south  of  the  Greek  Fort  Ruj^el,  on  the  east  bank 
of  the  Struma.  Thus  Fort  Rupel  was  as  effectu- 
ally cut  off  as  if  it  had  been  located  in  Bulgarian 
territory.  All  the  military  embarrassments  un- 
der which  his  troops  labored,  and  which  King 
Constantine  had  exposed  to  Lord  Kitchener, 
were  ignored.  The  statement  of  the  French  and 
British  ministers  that  "the  withdrawal  of  the 
Greek  troops  from  Macedonia  would  leave  the 

1  One  thing  is  astounding:  several  months  ago  both  French  and 
Greek  officers  pointed  out  to  General  Sarrail  the  importance  of 
Fort  Rupel  and  his  advantage  in  taking  possession  of  it.  It  is 
rather  difficult  to  understand  why  this  advice  was  not  followed, 
the  army  at  Saloniki  being  plenty  large  enough  to  permit  this 
slight  extension  of  the  Allied  front  and  numerous  other  points 
having  already  been  previously  occupied. — "Gazette  de  Lausanne," 
No.  218,  1916. 

2S6 


FORT  RUPEL 

Allied  powers  indifferent"  seemed  to  be  the  key- 
note of  the  Entente  policy  toward  the  Greek 
forces  in  eastern  INIacedonia.  At  bottom  the  in- 
tention was  undoubtedly  so  to  weaken  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Greeks  in  this  sector  that  any  effort 
to  resist  a  Bulgarian  advance  single-handed 
would  be  fruitless  and  the  Greeks,  to  defend  their 
own  territory  from  invasion,  would  be  forced  to 
join  the  Allies. 

Whether  or  not  this  was  a  deliberate,  thought- 
out  policy  on  the  part  of  the  Entente,  counting 
for  its  success  on  the  Greek  fear  of  the  Bulgars 
and  hostility  to  them,  is  not  material.  Certainly 
Mr.  Venizelos,  in  discussing  an  apocryphal  dec- 
laration alleged  to  have  been  made  by  the  Greek 
monarch  to  the  correspondent  of  the  "Berliner 
Tageblatt,"  of  his  conviction  that  "the  Bulgarians 
will  evacuate  the  Greek  territory  when  they  shall 
have  driven  their  enemies  out  of  Greece,"  showed 
that  he  believed  his  king  could  not  stand  against 
the  anti-Bulgarian  sentiment  in  Greece,  and  that 
a  Bulgarian  invasion  would  force  the  Greek 
monarch  to  join  the  Allies  whether  militarily 
prudent  or  not.  No  one  seems,  however,  to  have 
counted  the  possible  cost  to  the  Allied  arms  of 

227 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

this  attempt  to  thrust  the  King  of  the  Hellenes 
into  a  corner,  whence  his  only  escape  would  be  in 
the  Entente  camp,  should  it  fail.  Yet  the  entire 
policy  of  trying  to  force  Greece  into  war  through 
the  weakness  instead  of  by  the  strength  of  her 
military  position  ran  counter  to  all  that  Con- 
stantine  had  frankly  said  to  Lord  Kitchener  and 
General  Sarrail. 

Every  logic  pointed  to  a  retirement  of  the 
Greeks  before  a  Bulgarian  advance.  Two 
months  previously  Venizelos  had  declared  to  me, 
"I  know  that  the  orders  have  gone  forth  that  if 
hostile  armies  enter  the  land  we  so  recently 
conquered,  the  Greek  forces  must  withdraw  and 
permit  the  scene  of  our  most  glorious  victories  to 
become  the  battle-ground  of  strangers."  Pre- 
cisely that  took  place  on  May  26.  The  Bulgar- 
ians appeared  before  Fort  Rupel  and  demanded 
its  evacuation  by  the  Greek  troops,  offering  a 
written  guarantee  that  the  fort  with  all  its  con- 
tents would  be  restored  after  the  war,  that  private 
property  would  be  protected,  and  that  the  terri- 
tory temporarily  occupied  would  be  evacuated 
later.  Prime  Minister  Skouloudis  accepted  the 
offer,  entering  a  formal  protest  against  an  act 

228 


FORT  RUPEL 

of  hostility,  which  his  government  communicated 
to  the  Entente  ministers.  Fort  Rupel  was 
promptly  abandoned  by  the  Greek  troops,  who 
first  rendered  its  guns  useless ;  the  Bulgarians  oc- 
cupied the  stronghold,  precisely  as  the  Allies  had 
occupied  Fort  Karabournou  and  Fort  Dova 
Tepe.  In  speaking  of  the  Government's  action, 
Premier  Skouloudis  characterized  it  as  the  only 
practical  course  open  to  Greece. 

Resistance,  after  the  condition  of  helplessness  to  which 
our  armies  in  eastern  Macedonia  have  been  reduced  by 
the  disposition  the  Entente  have  demanded  of  them, 
would  have  been  ridiculous.  The  best  we  could  do  was 
to  secure  certain  written  guarantees,  which  were  given 
us  only  on  condition  that  we  would  not  attempt  resist- 
ance. Had  we  resisted,  we  should  have  been  forced 
into  war  and  I  fail  to  see  what  we  should  have  gained 
by  it. 

The  Venizelists  seized  the  opportunity  to 
organize  anti-Bulgarian  meetings  and  to  try  to 
inflame  public  feeling  to  war  pitch.  The  French 
minister  in  Athens  consulted  his  government  and 
General  Sarrail,  and  six  days  later  made  it  plain 
to  Prime  ^Minister  Skouloudis  that  the  surrender 
of  Fort  Rupel  would  be  taken  by  the  French  and 
British  governments  as  the  ostensible  reason  for 
the  adoption  of  a  still  more  drastic  policy  in  deal- 

229 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ing  with  Greece.  M.  Guillemin  informed  the 
Greek  premier  that  the  Entente  considered  the 
surrender  of  Fort  Rupel  a  violation  of  Greece's 
promised  "benevolent  neutrality."  He  stated 
that  General  Sarrail  would  take  whatever 
measures  the  military  situation  created  by  this 
act  of  the  Greeks  required,  without  previous 
warning.  On  June  3,  General  Sarrail  declared 
martial  law  in  all  parts  of  Greece  occupied  by 
the  Entente.  On  June  6,  Sir  Francis  Elliot 
told  the  Greek  Government  that  "if  the  Ger- 
man and  Bulgarian  advance  into  Greek  terri- 
tory continued  unresisted,  the  consequences  to 
the  Greek  Government  would  be  most  serious." 
The  advance,  however,  seemed  to  halt  at  Fort 
Rupel  and  the  bridgehead  of  Demir  Hissar,  as 
Sir  Francis  himself  admitted.  Nevertheless, 
on  June  6,  an  undeclared  blockade  of  the 
Greek  ports  began  with  great  rigor,  and  every 
effort  of  the  Greek  Government  to  obtain  from 
the  Entente  an  explanation  of  the  blockade  or  a 
statement  of  the  terms  upon  which  it  would  be 
raised  proved  unavailing. 

The    Venizelists    were    more    communicative. 
They  asserted,  evidently  with  the  knowledge  of 

2S0 


FORT  RUPEL 

the  Entente,  that  the  blockade  was  to  force  the 
resignation  of  the  Skouloudis  cabinet,  the  dis- 
sokition  of  the  Boule  and  new  elections,  which 
the  Venizelists  counted  upon  carrying.  Their 
pro-war  propaganda  at  this  moment  was  at  its 
height.  In  reply  to  it,  King  Constantine,  ad- 
mitting the  impossibility  of  defending  eastern 
lilacedonia  with  the  force  he  was  permitted  to  re- 
tain and  under  the  military  conditions  prevail- 
ing in  that  section,  ordered  on  June  8,  the  demo- 
bilization of  150,000  men.  At  the  same  time  the 
French  fleet  occupied  the  island  of  Thassos,  off 
Cavalla;  but  no  Entente  force  was  sent  across 
the  Struma  to  prevent  any  further  Bulgarian 
advance  southward,  and  no  effort  was  made  to 
replace  the  retiring  Greeks  in  eastern  Macedonia 
by  Allied  troops. 

On  June  12,  six  days  after  the  beginning  of 
the  blockade,  the  Government  decided  to  order 
a  complete  demobihzation.  The  Venizelist  pro- 
war  propaganda,  violent  as  all  newspaper  po- 
lemics in  Greece  are,  inspired  an  equal  anti-Veni- 
zelist  propaganda  on  the  part  of  the  government 
organs.  Charges  and  countercharges  resulted 
finally  in  an  attempt  to  assassinate  King  Con- 

231 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

stantine  by  a  mad  Venizelist  who  cried  that  the 
ai3plause  of  which  the  Greek  sovereign  had  just 
been  the  recipient  at  a  function  in  the  Stadium 
was  "paid  for  by  Baron  von  Schenck."  The  at- 
tempt was  followed  by  a  counter-demonstration 
against  the  Venizelists  in  which  a  number  of 
Venizelist  newspaper  offices  were  stoned.  To 
the  blockade  the  Entente  added  a  further  turn  of 
the  financial  screw  by  ruling  Greek  loans  off  the 
London  and  Paris  stock  exchanges.  The  po- 
sition of  the  Skouloudis  government  was  plainly 
untenable.  The  king  sent  to  ^gena,  where 
Mr.  Zaimis  was  spending  the  summer,  and  re- 
quested the  former  premier  to  consult  with  him 
concerning  the  formation  of  a  new  cabinet. 

At  this  moment  a  curious  circumstance  reveals 
the  position  occupied  by  the  entire  Entente  policy 
in  the  near  East.  Neither  the  Greek  sovereign 
nor  his  government  had  been  able  up  to  that  mo- 
ment to  ascertain  in  what  form  the  Entente  would 
make  the  demands  conditional  upon  lifting  the 
blockade.  But  Mr.  Venizelos  and  his  followers 
were  in  no  such  ignorance.  No  sooner  had  the 
king  sent  a  destroyer  to  fetch  Mr.  Zaimis  than 
Mr.  E.  Repoulis,  one  of  Venizelos's  right-hand 

232 


FORT  RUPEL 

men,  wrote  the  Cretan  a  hasty  note  acquainting 
him  with  the  fact,  and  urging  the  delivery  of  the 
Entente  note  at  once,  before  the  Skouloudis  cab- 
inet could  resign  and  jNIr.  Zaimis,  whose  friend- 
ship for  the  Entente  was  well  known,  could  be 
installed  as  premier.  ^Ir.  Re5)ouhs  wrote  quite 
as  if  not  the  Entente,  but  i\Ir.  Venizelos  himself, 
were  the  author  of  the  Entente  ultimatum  and 
were  directing  the  diplomatic  action  of  the  Allies. 
His  thought  w^as  plainly  not  to  see  certain  guar- 
antees obtained  for  the  Entente,  but  to  draw  out 
of  the  embarrassing  position  of  the  Skouloudis 
government  the  maximum  advantage  for  Veni- 
zelos and  his  partizans.  As  far  as  Repoulis  and 
Venizelos  were  concerned,  the  Entente  did  not 
figure  in  the  situation,  save  as  a  mere  instrument 
to  the  forwarding  of  the  political  fortunes  of 
Venizelos  and  his  followers.  Thanks  to  the 
prompt  action  of  Venizelos,  on  JNIr.  Repoulis's 
representations,  the  Entente  ultimatum  was  pre- 
sented the  following  day,  June  21,  before  King 
Constantine  could  constitute  a  cabinet  whose 
character  would  render  the  presentation  of  any 
ultimatum  superfluous. 


233 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   FIRST   ULTIMATUM 

The  presentation  of  the  Entente  ultimatum  of 
June  21  was  so  hurried  by  the  fears  of  the  Veni- 
zeHsts  that  a  cabinet  acceptable  to  the  Entente 
would  be  formed  before  the  document  could 
be  delivered,  that  Vice  Admiral  Moreau's  fleet, 
which  was  to  make  a  demonstration  off  the 
Piraeus  simultaneously  with  the  presentation  of 
the  ultimatum,  had  not  yet  arrived  when  the  note 
was  left  at  the  ministry  for  foreign  affairs.  The 
Skouloudis  cabinet,  however,  had  resigned  that 
morning,  and  Alexander  Zai'mis  was  not  yet  able 
to  form  a  new  ministry.  The  note  was  therefore 
returned  to  the  ministers  who  had  left  it.  These 
circumstances  of  haste  in  the  action  served  to 
convince  the  doubting  how  much  the  demands 
themselves  were  a  matter  of  internal  politics  of 
Greece  rather  than  of  that  consistent  foreign 
policy   of   high   ideals   dictating   the   course   of 

234 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

the   Entente   powers   elsewhere   in   their   world 
struggle. 

The  demands  proper  were  preceded  by  a  sort 
of  preamble  stating  that  "the  three  guaranteeing 
Powers  do  not  require  Greece  to  leave  her  neu- 
trality. They  have,  however,  certain  complaints 
against  the  Greek  Government,  whose  attitude  is 
not  one  of  loyal  neutrality."  To  this  followed 
an  indictment  of  the  Skouloudis  cabinet  for  every 
action  in  which  it  failed  to  show  positive  and  prac- 
tical favor  toward  the  Entente,  however  much  the 
action  complained  of  may  have  been  a  direct  re- 
sult of  the  previous  course  adoi)ted  by  the  Allies 
themselves.  Of  this  preamble.  King  Constan- 
tine  said,  "It  is  useless  to  discuss  the  demands 
themselves,  when  the  reasons  given  for  them  in 
the  document  are  devoid  of  truth  from  beginning 
to  end."  The  actual  demands  constituted,  in  the 
opinion  of  Deputy  Agamemnon  Schlieman,  for- 
mer Greek  minister  to  Washington,  "an  abdi- 
cation of  the  sovereignty  of  our  own  country." 

They  were : 

1.  Real  and  complete  demobilization  of  the  Greek 
army  whicli  must,  with  the  least  possible  delay,  be  put 
upon  a  peace  footing. 

2.  The   immediate    rephicing   of    the    present   Greek 

£35 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

cabinet  by  a  business  cabinet  having  no  political  color 
and  offering  all  necessary  guarantees  for  the  applica- 
tion of  benevolent  neutrality  toward  the  Allied  Powers 
and  sincere  consultation  of  the  national  wishes. 

3.  The  immediate  dissolution  of  the  Boule  followed 
by  new  elections  after  the  period  required  b}'  the  Con- 
stitution and  after  a  general  demobilization  has  re- 
stored the  electoral  body  to  normal  conditions. 

4.  The  replacement  of  certain  police  functionaries 
whose  attitude,  inspired  by  foreign  influence,  has  facili- 
tated attempts  against  peaceful  citizens  as  well  as 
insults  against  the  Allied  Legations  and  those  under 
their  jurisdiction. 

Nothing  would  be  gained  by  seeking  to 
deny  that  the  four  demands  constituted  a  very 
grave  interference  in  the  internal  affairs  of 
Greece  in  behalf  of  Venizelos  and  his  party. 
The  Greek  Constitution  was  to  be  applicable  only 
where  convenient:  the  cabinet,  which  constitu- 
tionally must  be  responsible  to  the  people  and 
whose  term  had  not  expired,  was  to  be  dismissed ; 
elections  were  to  be  held  within  the  constitutional 
period,  only  if  the  demobilization  had  "restored 
the  electoral  body  to  normal  conditions" — in  fine, 
only  if  it  were  evident  that  Venizelos  could  carry 
the  country ;  otherwise,  the  Constitution  was  to  be 
suspended  and  elections  were  not  to  be  held. 
The  success  of  the  Venizelists  in  the  elections 
might  depend  uj)on  having  a  Venizelist  chief  of 

236 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

police  in  office,  therefore  this  also  was  required. 
Tlie  latter  point  recalls  Sir  Edward  Grey's 
protest  to  Count  INIensdorff  against  the  Austrian 
demands  upon  the  Serbian  Government  on  July 
23,  lOli,  which  were  the  moving  cause  of  the 
European  War.     Sir  Edward  Grey  said: 

I  have  never  seen  one  State  address  to  another  inde- 
pendent State  a  document  of  so  formidable  a  charac- 
ter. Demand  No.  5  would  be  hardly  consistent  witli 
the  maintenance  of  Serbia's  independent  sovereignty  if 
it  were  to  mean,  as  it  seemed  that  it  might,  that  Aus- 
tria-Hungary was  to  be  invested  with  a  right  to  ap- 
point officers  who  would  have  authority  within  the  fron- 
tiers of  Serbia.^ 

Quite  as  effectively  as  Austria  with  regard  to 
Serbia,  the  Entente  proposed  to  require  the  ap- 
pointment of  a  chief  of  police,  Colonel  Zym- 
brakakis,  devoted  to  the  interests  of  Venizelos; 
and  the  fourth  clause  of  the  ultimatum  of  June 
21  subsequently  proved  but  a  forerunner  to  a  de- 
mand of  complete  police  control  made  in  due 
form  and  put  into  execution  less  than  four 
months  later.  All  that  Great  Britain  com- 
plained of  in  Austria's  attitude  toward  Serbia 
two  years  previously.  Great  Britain  was  now  im- 

1  Sir  Edward  Grey  to  Sir  M.  de  Bunsen,  July  24,  1914.  Britisii 
Blue  Book   Xo.  5. 

S37 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

posing  upon  Greece,  with  a  fleet  off  the  Pireeus 
to  back  her — all,  and  more  besides. 

The  ground  upon  which  it  is  claimed  that  the 
Entente  has  a  right  to  intervene  in  the  internal 
affairs  of  Greece  is  principally  the  Treaty  of 
London  of  1864  between  France,  Great  Britain, 
and  Russia  on  one  hand  and  Greece  on  the  other. 
The  treaty  is  the  one  by  which  the  Ionian  Islands 
were  united  with  Greece.  Its  first  article  reads 
in  part : 

Greece,  within  the  limits  determined  by  the  arrange- 
ment concluded  between  the  three  courts  and  the  Otto- 
man Porte,  shall  form  a  monarchical  State,  independent 
and  constitutional,  under  the  sovereignty  of  His  Maj- 
esty King  George  and  under  the  guarantee  of  the 
Powers. 

The  independence  of  Greece  is  plainly  recog- 
nized; it  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  guarantee  of 
independence  can  well  abolish  it.  As  for  the 
"constitutionality"  of  Greece,  it  was  after  all  the 
Greeks  themselves  who  "making  use  of  their 
sovereignty,"  ^  proclaimed  in  a  decree  of  the  Na- 
tional Hellenic  Assembly  on  March  30,  1863, 
Prince  William  of  Denmark  "Constitutional 
King  of  the   Hellenes."^     The   three   powers, 

1  Yellow  Book  1862,  p.  90.  2  Yellow  Book,  1863,  p.  100. 

238 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

called  guarantors,  merely  recognized  in  the  phras- 
ing of  their  treaty  this  exercise  of  the  sovereignty 
residing  in  the  Greek  j^eople.  Finally,  the 
Greek  Constitution  itself  states  the  matter  quite 
clearly : 

"Ai-ticle  XXI.  All  authorities  emanate  from 
the  nation  and  are  exercised  in  the  manner  laid 
down  in  the  Constitution." 

Thej^  are  not,  evidently,  exercised  in  the  man- 
ner laid  down  by  the  Entente  ultimatum  of  June 
21,  1916.  As  for  the  Constitution  of  1832,  which 
is  also  invoked  to  prove  the  right  of  the  three 
protecting  powers  to  intervene  in  the  internal 
affairs  of  Greece  in  behalf  of  constitutional  gov- 
ernment,— though  that  instrument  was  duly  su- 
perseded in  turn  by  the  Constitutions  of  1844  and 
1864,  and  the  latter  further  revised  in  1911  with- 
out consulting  the  protecting  powers, — there  is  a 
certain  unconscious  irony  in  any  reference  to  it  as 
a  charter  of  democracy  for  the  Hellenic  people. 
It  was  imposed  upon  the  newly  freed  Greeks  by 
Great  Britain,  France,  and  Russia.  The  Greeks 
wanted  an  instrument  far  more  liberal.  As  Pro- 
fessor Hayes  puts  it,^  "the  Great  Powers,  how- 

1  Prof.  Carlton  J.  H.  Hayes:  "Political  and  Social  History  of 
Modern  Europe,"  Vol.  H,  p.  499. 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ever,  could  hardly  sanction  republicanism  and 
nationalism  in  the  case  of  the  Greeks,  while  at  the 
same  time  liberalism  and  nationahsm  were  under 
the  ban  in  Europe." 

One  further  point  in  respect  to  this  ultimatum 
was  raised  by  Deputy  Agamemnon  Schlieman, 
in  a  statement  which  he  gave  me  at  this  time. 

How  can  the  foreign  naval  and  military  occupation 
of  over  half  of  Greece  and  martial  law  under  foreign 
control  throughout  Macedonia  be  taken  as  constitut- 
ing the  normal  conditions  of  the  electoral  body  under 
which  there  can  be  the  "sincere  consultation  of  the 
national  wishes"  which  the  ultimatum  itself  demands? 
It  is  as  absurd  to  say  that  fair  elections  can  be  held 
in  Greece  under  these  circumstances  as  to  claim  that 
elections  held  in  Luxemburg  under  the  heel  of  Prus- 
sian soldiery  could  represent  the  real  will  of  the  peo- 
ple of  that  country. 

Generally  speaking,  opinion  in  Athens  was  less 
opposed  to  the  demands  contained  in  the  ulti- 
matum than  to  the  use  to  which  the  Entente,  and 
particularly  the  Venizelists,  proposed  to  put 
them.  There  was  still  sufficient  friendly  feeling 
toward  the  Entente,  even  in  those  who  objected 
most  bitterly  to  the  demands  of  the  ultimatum, 
to  concede  to  the  three  self-styled  "powers  guar- 
antors" whatever  they  desired  sliort  of  Greece's 
participation  in  the  war  or,  the  equivalent,  the 

240 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

imposition  of  Venizelos  as  dictator  of  Greece. 
^Vliat  aroused  the  indignation  of  the  Greeks 
was  the  conviction  that  the  Entente  were  not  im- 
partially supporting  constitutional  government 
in  Greece — constitutional  government  had  never 
been  endangered;  but  that  the  Entente  had  a 
definite  stake  in  the  game;  that  the  Allies  were 
definitely  interested  in  behalf  of  their  man  Veni- 
zelos ^  in  insisting  upon  elections  at  this  time, 
and  that  the  interest  of  the  Entente  powers 
in  the  internal  administration  of  Greece  did  not 
accord  with  the  will  of  the  majority  of  the  coun- 
try, unquestionably  opposed  to  Greece's  entry 
into  hostilities.^  The  repeated  declarations  of 
the  Entente  diplomatists  that  the  Allies  were  not 
seeking  to  force  Greece  to  leave  neutrahty  were 
held  in  Greece  to  be  sheer  hypocrisy,  for  home 
consumption,  in  the  face  of  the  Entente's  open 
support  of  Venizelos,  whose  declared  program 
was  to  join  the  Greek  to  the  Allied  armies. 

1 M.  Philippe  Secretan,  correspondent  of  the  Francophile 
"Gazette  de  Lausanne":  "As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  great  Cretan 
[Venizelos]  was  no  stranger  to  the  execution  of  the  Allied  man- 
oeuver,  whose  success  it  is  not  impossible  may  have  in  large 
measure  been  due  to  him."  Quoted  in  "The  Entente  and  Greece," 
Maj.   Michael  Passaris;   p.  75. 

•i  See    Arnaldo   Fraccoroli's   statement,   Appendix   5. 

241 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Mr.  Zaimis  took  the  helm  of  the  Government 
and  formed  a  cabinet  in  which  he  placed  three 
pronounced  Ententists.  Colonel  Zymbrakakis 
was  named  chief  of  police  as  the  Entente  desired. 
A  general  demobilization  decree  was  signed,  the 
demobilization  to  be  completed  by  the  end  of 
July.  The  Allied  ministers  indicated  144  mem- 
bers of  the  police  force  of  Athens  whose  dismissal 
they  required  in  order  that  the  Anglo-French 
secret  police  in  Greece,  already  a  formidable  or- 
ganization, might  be  in  effective  control  of  the 
policing  of  the  country.  On  July  3,  following 
this  earnest  of  the  execution  of  the  Allied  de- 
mands, the  blockade  which  had  endured  almost  a 
month,  was  formally  raised,  albeit  the  Allied 
naval  control  of  foodstuffs  reaching  Greece  from 
abroad  still  kept  the  people  on  very  short  rations. 
American  wheat  ships  bound  for  Greece  were 
held  indefinitely  at  Gibraltar  and  Malta  on  one 
excuse  or  another.  Cable  orders  of  food  sup- 
plies from  the  United  States  were  delayed, 
garbled  or  held  by  the  British  censors.  Veni- 
zelist  ship-owners  or  importers  were  favored;  the 
opponents  of  the  Cretan  were  handicapped  in 

every  activity  of  foreign  trade. 

24Q 


:  > 


I.  "C 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

Six  months  jDrevioiisly  Venizelos  had  pro- 
claimed any  new  elections  unconstitutional,  stand- 
ing stubborn^  on  those  of  June  13,  1915,  as  the 
only  legal  expression  of  the  will  of  the  people. 
Two  months  later  he  changed  this  attitude  and 
himself  stood  for  office  and  was  elected  to  a 
Boule,  which  he  still  pronounced  illegal.  Fol- 
lowing the  Entente  ultimatum,  however,  he  took 
the  stand  that  new  elections  were  entirely  con- 
stitutional, even  when  imposed  by  an  armed  de- 
mand of  foreign  powers,  and  that  still  further 
elections  must  be  held.  In  this  complicated 
reasoning,  the  Entente  ministers  in  Athens  fol- 
lowed the  Cretan  blindly.  But  one  step  further 
was  necessary  to  demonstrate  the  control  Veni- 
zelos exercised  over  the  policy  of  the  Entente  in 
the  near  East.  When,  the  last  of  August,  after 
forty  days  of  hard  campaigning,  the  Cretan  be- 
came convinced  that  the  people  of  Greece  were 
opposed  to  his  war  program,  he  again  shifted 
ground  and  demanded  that  the  Entente  waive 
their  requirement  of  an  immediate  election,  em- 
bodied at  his  instance  in  the  ultimatum  of  June 
21.     They  did  so. 

From  the  moment  of  Premier  Zaimis's  prompt 
245 


CONSTANTINE  I  ANP  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

execution  of  the  demands  of  the  Entente  ulti- 
matum, all  the  attention  of  the  Venizehsts  as  well 
as  of  the  Entente  was  directed  to  the  success  of 
Venizelos  in  the  approaching  elections.  In  this 
the  French  military  authorities  in  Macedonia  gave 
Venizelos  every  assistance,  taking  active  part  in 
the  campaign  under  the  Cretan's  direction.  I 
have  already  quoted  parts  of  several  letters  from 
Venizelos's  supporters  and  workers  to  their  chief, 
from  which  the  active  foreign  influence  in  the  elec- 
tions is  evident.  These  Venizelist  agents  were 
furnished  with  special  military  passes  by  the 
French  authorities;  they  conducted  their  busi- 
ness in  French  army  automobiles.  The  Cretan 
police,  of  whom  some  two  hundred  were  in  the 
service  of  the  Allies,  were  to  be  employed,  in  Mr. 
Ehakis's  phrase,  "to  terrorize  the  Mussulmans." 
Eliakis  writes  his  chief  from  Cozani  that  he  had 
traveled  with  two  groups  of  these  bravos  bound 
for  Fiorina  and  Vodena.  "The  chief  of  the 
French  secret  service  at  Vodena  accompanied 
them,"  he  informs  Venizelos.  "He  told  me  that 
he  had  been  transferred  with  a  view  to  terrorizing 
the  Mussulmans  of  Kharatzova."  Pamicos  Zym- 
brakakis  reports  to  his  chief  in  the  same  sense. 

246 


THE  FIRST  LLTIIMATUM 

"Undoubtedly  we  have  need  of  work,"  he  says, 
"fanatic  work,  perhaps  even  terrifying  work,  to 
coral  the  Mussuhnans  and  the  Jews."  EHakis's 
letters  to  Venizelos  reveal  him  plotting  wholesale 
arrests  in  cooperation  with  the  French  consul  and 
assisted  by  "Cretans  of  the  French  police,  with  na- 
tive guides.  Thus  the  arrests  can  be  easily  ef- 
fected by  night,"  he  adds. 

Completely  protected  by  the  changes  in  the 
police  of  Athens  demanded  by  the  Entente's  ulti- 
matum, the  Anglo-French  secret  police  increased 
its  numbers  of  unsavory  operatives.  There  was 
a  striking  contrast  between  the  Italian  and  the 
Anglo-French  secret  police  organizations  in 
Greece.  The  former  were  inconspicuous  and  effi- 
cient, while  the  court  and  police  records  of 
Athens  revealed  the  latter  to  include  ex-convicts, 
professional  gamblers,  white-slavers,  and  individ- 
uals of  a  class  even  lower  than  that  usually  drawn 
upon  for  work  of  this  character.  In  addition 
there  were  women  of  loose  morals,  imported  from 
France  or  Italy,  who  could  be  seen  nightly  in 
the  company  of  the  responsible  directors  of  the 
Anglo-French  secret  police  in  the  best  restaurants 

247 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  theaters  of  Athens,  to  the  disgust  not  only 
of  the  Greeks,  but  of  the  respectable  British  and 
French  residents  of  Greece.  At  its  height  this 
work  cost  the  British  taxpayer,  alone,  between 
four  and  five  thousand  pounds  a  month,  accord- 
ing to  one  of  the  Allied  diplomatists  in  Athens, 
in  a  position  to  know  the  extent  and  char- 
acter of  the  operations  of  this  sinister  organi- 
zation. While  much  of  the  money  went  into 
jewels  and  finery  for  French  prostitutes  and  the 
expenses  of  joy-riding  automobiles,  the  work  of 
the  organization  itself  was  conducted  in  close  co- 
operation with  the  Venizelists,  and  the  whole  au- 
thority of  its  unrestrained  power  was  at  the 
disposition  of  Venizelos  for  his  electoral  cam- 
paign. 

Yet  it  availed  very  little.  Neither  General 
Sarrail's  Cretan  policemen  nor  the  lavish  em- 
ployees of  the  Anglo-French  secret  police  served 
to  move  the  Greek  voter,  except  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent in  opposition  to,  rather  than  in  compliance 
with,  the  effort  made  to  influence  him  in  favor 
of  war.  The  Greeks  are  intensely  individual, 
passionately  independent.  External  pressure 
only  succeeded  in  driving  them  closer  in  their 

248 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

allegiance  to  their  democratic  king,  further 
away  from  the  politician  who  was  seeking  to 
force  them  by  a  dictator's  means.  The  process 
of  decision  was  by  no  means  immediate.  It 
was  some  three  months  before  even  Venizelos 
reahzed  that  his  chosen  political  method  of  em- 
ploying foreign  force  and  foreign  money  would 
no  more  succeed  in  making  the  Greeks  favor  war 
than  Baron  von  Schenck's  employment  of  Ger- 
man money  had  succeeded  in  making  them  favor 
Germany.  At  bottom,  the  Greeks  were  still  de- 
voted to  France,  despite  every  pressure  and  an- 
noyance put  upon  them  by  the  French.  But  at 
bottom,  also,  they  were  still  devoted  to  peace. 

Venizelos's  weakness  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  tried 
to  impose  his  own  enthusiasm  for  war  upon  the 
Greek  people  and  to  imbue  them  with  his  own 
limitless  ambition  for  territorial  aggrandizement. 
When  he  failed  he  placed  the  blame  upon  the 
German  propagandists,  upon  the  general  staff, 
upon  King  Constantine,  even  upon  the  Entente 
for  not  supporting  him  sufficiently.  He  called 
the  Greek  sovereign  "blinded  by  prejudice." 
But  the  strength  of  Constantine  I  with  the  Hel- 
lenic people  lay  in  his  own  essential  democracy. 

249 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

It  lay  in  the  fact  that  while  Venizelos  was  trying 
by  every  means  to  force  public  opinion,  King 
Constantine  was  merely  interpreting  it,  as  it  had 
crystallized  in  the  minds  of  the  people  themselves. 
The  people  of  Greece  loved  and  trusted  their  sov- 
ereign because  he  stood  for  what  they  stood  for. 
They  mistrusted  Venizelos  because  he  did  not. 

And  while  Venizelos,  in  the  two  months  follow- 
ing the  presentation  of  the  Entente  ultimatum 
of  June  21,  was  trying  to  undermine  the  king 
and  take  power  into  his  own  hands  in  Greece, 
King  Constantine  was  once  more  quietly  at  work 
on  the  business  of  clearing  up  all  the  misunder- 
standings, the  false  springs  of  action,  and  the 
stubborn  pursuit  of  an  unsuccessful  policy  that 
had  upset  every  calculation  of  the  Allies  in  the 
near  East,  with  a  view  to  a  frank  military  cooper- 
ation of  Greece  with  the  Entente  on  a  basis  of 
mutual  self-respect  and  independence. 

To  this  end,  on  July  3,  as  soon  as  the  details 
of  the  execution  of  the  terms  of  the  Entente  ulti- 
matum had  been  arranged,  he  sent  his  brothers, 
Princes  Nicholas  and  Andrew,  to  Petrograd  and 
London,  respectively,  on  special  mission.  His 
brother,  Prince  George,  was  already  in  Paris, 

250 


THE  FIRST  ULTIMATUM 

prepared  to  work  to  the  same  end.  It  would 
have  been  difficult  to  have  found  three  men  in 
Greece  better  equipped  for  the  tasks  they  had 
in  hand.  By  ties  of  marriage,  friendship,  and 
long  association,  each  of  the  princes  was  bound 
to  the  country  in  which  he  was  to  try,  in  con- 
junction with  King  Constantine,  to  clear  up 
the  whole  near  Eastern  situation  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  Entente  and  of  Greece. 


251 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE   BULGARIAN    INVASION 

On  August  17,  in  compliance  with  the  Allied 
ultimatum  of  June  21,  the  Greek  staff  withdrew 
its  troops  from  eighteen  Greek  villages  between 
the  Fiorina- Vodena  line  and  the  Serbian  frontier, 
to  make  way  for  the  Serbian  forces  lately  arrived 
in  Saloniki.  Though  General  Sarrail  had  been 
in  Saloniki  eleven  months,  neither  his  force  nor 
his  equipment  was  yet  in  shape  for  offensive  ac- 
tion. He  lacked  men,  mountain  transport,  and 
mountain  artillery.  Of  the  force  with  which  he 
had  planned  to  begin  an  attack  six  months  previ- 
ously a  startling  percentage  had  been  invalided 
home  with  malaria.  The  French  in  France,  oc- 
cupied still  with  the  defense  of  Verdun,  could 
spare  no  more  men.  The  increase  of  activity  of 
the  German  submarines  in  the  Mediterranean  had 
so  limited  the  vessels  available  for  transport  to 
INIacedonia  that  it  was  all  the  Allies  could  do  to 
keep  their  Macedonian  armies  provided  with  food 

252 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

and  other  supplies,  much  less  ship  new  troops 
and  pack  mules  for  mountain  transport. 

The  Greeks  themselves  were  on  short  rations 
and  could  let  the  Allies  have  little  in  the  way  of 
foodstuffs.  The  Entente  with  singular  short- 
sightedness had  decreed,  on  August  8,  that  the 
wheat  and  flour  imported  into  Greece  monthly 
should  be  limited  to  36,000  tons,  the  corn  to  3000, 
sugar  to  2000,  coal  to  25,000,  rice  to  17,000  tons. 
Xo  coffee  was  permitted  at  all.  This  was  not 
enough  to  feed  the  Greeks,  far  less  to  allow  the 
Greeks  to  sell  their  surplus  to  the  Allied  Orient 
armies.  There  was,  therefore,  no  possibility  of 
an  offensive  by  General  Sarrail  for  the  moment. 
But  these  conditions,  created  by  the  Allies  them- 
selves always  in  their  pursuit  of  a  jDolitical  rather 
than  a  military  policy  in  the  near  East,  in  no 
sense  prevented  the  Bulgarians  and  Germans  not 
so  much  from  attacking  Saloniki,  carefully  and 
heavily  fortified  for  defense,  but  from  cutting  it 
off  on  both  sides  and  rendering  General  Sar- 
rail's  position  uncomfortable,  when  not  actually 
dangerous. 

The  contempt  which  the  Allied  military  au- 
thorities displayed  at  this  juncture  for  the  Greek 

253 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

staff  was  their  undoing.  Instead  of  amicably 
arranging  the  time  and  terms  of  the  Greek  demo- 
bihzation,  they  demanded  it  in  a  period  requiring 
the  most  rapid  possible  action  by  the  Greek  staff. 
When,  therefore,  the  Greeks  evacuated  the  eight- 
een villages  in  the  Florina-Vodena  sector,  the 
Serbs  were  not  ready  to  occupy  them,  and  the 
Bulgarians  quietly  advanced  their  lines  in  a  wide 
arc  to  the  west  of  Saloniki,  cutting  Sarrail  off 
from  any  possibility  of  stretching  his  communi- 
cations westward  to  join  the  Italian  outposts 
thrust  eastward  from  Valona. 

Meanwhile,  both  General  Moscopoulos  an(| 
Prime  Minister  Zaimis,  the  former  directly,  tht 
latter  through  the  Entente  legations  in  Athens, 
called  to  the  attention  of  the  Allies  the  danger  to 
General  Sarrail  of  a  hasty  withdrawal  of  the 
Greek  troops  from  eastern  Macedonia,  and  urged 
that  Sarrail  occupy  Drama,  Serres,  and  Cavalla 
as  the  Greeks  retired,  or  that  the  Greek  demobili- 
zation be  postponed  until  such  time  as  Sarrail 
should  be  able  and  ready  to  take  up  the  positions 
evacuated.  The  Greek  staff  instanced  the  case 
of  Fort  Rupel  as  an  example  of  what  might  hap- 
pen with  Serres,  Drama,  and  Cavalla,  and  drew 

^64 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

a  similar  lesson  from  the  Bulgarian  occupation 
of  the  Fiorina- Vodena  sector. 

Neither  General  Sarrail  nor  the  Allied  min- 
isters in  Athens  would  listen  to  these  suggestions. 
The  Greeks  must  get  out  at  once;  what  hap- 
pened afterwards  was  the  Entente's  business. 
On  August  20,  consequently,  the  Greek  staff 
ordered  the  three  divisions  holding  the  line  be- 
low Fort  Rupel  to  retire  on  Cavalla.  The  Bul- 
garians followed  closely  on  their  heels,  taking  up 
the  abandoned  positions.  At  the  same  time,  the 
Bulgarian  right  wing,  west  of  Fiorina,  now  in 
Bulgarian  hands,  advanced  in  a  broad  semi-circu- 
lar swing  through  Castoria  to  Cozani,  evidently 
with*  the  idea  of  driving  the  Serbs  and  the  newly 
arrived  Russians  back  upon  Saloniki. 

On  August  24,  the  Allied  ministers  in  Athens, 
alarmed  by  this  Bulgarian  advance,  asked 
Premier  Zai'mis  how  far  the  Greek  Government 
intended  to  permit  it  to  proceed  without  resist- 
ance. The  prime  minister  replied  that  the  En- 
tente's ultimatum  had  demanded  a  complete 
demobilization  of  the  Greek  army.  A  complete 
demobilization,  he  pointed  out,  was  scarcely  con- 
sonant with  an  effective  resistance  to  an  invasion 

255 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  Greece.     A  complete  demobilization  had  been 
insisted  upon.     They  should  have  it. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  Allies  anticipated  precisely  what 
did  happen  in  eastern  Macedonia.  On  Febru- 
ary 5,  French  Minister  Guillemin  told  me  that 
the  Entente  "relied  on  King  Constantine's  dec- 
laration that  in  case  of  an  attack  upon  the  Allies 
in  Macedonia,  the  Greek  troops  would  be  ordered 
to  withdraw  and  leave  the  combatants  a  free 
field,"  as  he  expressed  it.  Then  M.  Guillemin 
was  trying  to  justify  the  French  occupation  of 
Fort  Karabournou.  Now,  however,  the  Entente 
were  evidently  still  relying  upon  King  Constan- 
tine's withdrawal  of  his  troops  before  the  Bul- 
garian advance  to  have  a  decisive  favorable 
effect  on  Venizelos's  candidacy  in  the  approach- 
ing elections.  The  feeling  in  Greece  against  the 
Bulgarians  ran  high.  A  Bulgarian  advance  into 
the  territory  Greece  had  conquered  from  Tsar 
Ferdinand's  soldiers  in  1913  could  not  fail  to 
embarrass  King  Constantine  and  strengthen 
Venizelos,  especially  if  the  latter  exploited  the 
fact  for  electoral  purposes.  He  did.  The  Veni- 
zelist  organs  raised  an  immense  clamor  that  the 

256 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

Greek  staff  had  sold  the  country  to  the  Bulgars, 
that  King  Constantine  had  a  secret  agreement 
with  Tsar  Ferdinand,  that  Cavalla  was  to  be 
turned  over  to  Bulgaria  without  the  compensa- 
tions which  Venizelos  had  proposed  to  obtain  for 
a  similar  delivery  of  Cavalla  to  Bulgaria  twenty 
months  previously ;  and  finally,  of  course,  that  the 
only  way  to  save  Greek  soil  from  being  sullied 
by  the  hated  enemy  was  to  return  Venizelos  to 
power  and  thus  to  join  Greece  to  the  Entente. 
The  fact  that  the  Entente  had  refused  to  occupy 
the  soil  in  question  was  ignored.  Nor  did  any 
of  the  Venizelists  seem  in  the  least  disturbed  by 
the  facility  with  which  the  Cretan  first  proposed 
to  cede  Cavalla,  Drama,  and  Serres  to  Bulgaria 
and  then  went  into  rages  of  patriotism  over  the 
thought  that  a  Bulgarian  should  ever  dare  set 
foot  in  that  district. 

To  advance  the  arguments  of  the  Venizelists, 
the  Entente  ministers  in  Athens  suddenly  affected 
a  supreme  indifference  to  a  Bulgarian  occupa- 
tion of  Greek  eastern  Macedonia,  Fiorina,  and 
Castoria,  claiming  that  as  Saloniki  was  supplied 
from  the  sea,  a  Bulgarian  advance  could  in  no 
wise  endanger  the  Allied  line  of  comnmnications. 

257 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  fury  with  which  the  Entente  press  subse- 
quently charged  the  Greek  staff  with  bad  faith  in 
permitting  the  Bulgars  to  occupy  Cavalla  is  in 
sharp  contrast  to  this  purely  political  stand  taken 
by  the  Entente  diplomatists  to  forward  Veni- 
zelos's  political  game.  General  Moscopoulos, 
however,  pricked  the  bubble  of  this  contention  by 
demonstrating  that  if  the  Bulgars'  westward 
swing  were  successful,  a  few  cannon  on  the  slopes 
of  Mt.  Olympus  could  close  the  entrance  of  the 
Gulf  of  Saloniki,  while  the  Germano-Bulgarian 
armies  would  catch  General  Sarrail  and  his  force 
in  a  giant  pincers  whence  escape  would  be  cut 
off. 

To  add  to  the  Government's  embarrassment, 
the  Italians  landed  at  Khimarra  on  the  Ionian 
coast,  thrusting  their  line  some  forty  miles  into 
Greek  territory,  ignoring  the  formal  assurances 
given  Greece  on  February  20  that  Italy  would 
not  violate  Greek  frontiers.  With  the  average 
Greek,  whose  parents  or  friends  may  have  been 
killed  in  the  Bulgarian  massacres  at  Doxato  dur- 
ing the  Balkan  wars,  Bulgaria  is  the  great  press- 
ing danger  hung  over  Greece.  Upon  this  feeling 
Venizelos  was  playing  in  his  campaign.     But  to 

258 


THE  BULGARIAN  IXVASION 

the  thoughtful  Greek,  not  Bulgaria,  but  Italy 
was  and  is  the  great  peril,  especially  since  the 
secret  agreement  of  Italy  with  the  Entente,  on 
April  25,  1915,  preceding  Italy's  entry  into  the 
war.  The  first  landing  of  Italian  troops  on 
Corfu  raised  a  storm  of  public  feeling  in  Greece, 
beside  which  the  opinion  created  by  the  French 
seizure  of  the  island  was  dwarfed.  To  this  act, 
the  Skouloudis  cabinet  had  replied  by  seating  in 
the  Boule  the  representatives  from  that  part  of 
Epirus  still  in  dispute  with  Italy.  Now,  Italy 
countered  by  landing  her  soldiers  on  Greek  soil, 
protected  from  reprisals  by  the  Allied  ultimatum 
of  June  21,  requiring  the  demobilization  of  the 
Greek  army. 

Once  the  leader  of  the  anti-Italian  party  in 
Greece,  Venizelos  now  held  his  peace  as  to  their 
encroachments;  now  the  leader  of  the  anti-Bul- 
garian party  in  Greece,  he  forgot  his  effort 
twenty  months  before  to  cede  part  of  Greece  to 
Bulgaria.  This  equivocal  policy  failed  to  take 
with  the  Greek  public,  despite  every  effort  of  the 
Entente  diplomatists  to  forward  it,  every  activity 
of  the  Entente-subsidized  newspapers  to  carry  it 
through ;  despite,  also,  the  cooperation  with  Gen- 

259 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

eral  Sarrail's  officers  of  the  Venizelist  electoral 
workers  and  the  Cretan  police  in  French  pay 
and  the  money  spent  and  the  pressure  exer- 
cised by  the  Anglo-French  secret  police.  It  was 
evident  the  Venizelists  were  not  sweeping  the 
country  with  their  pro-war  propaganda,  as  had 
been  expected.  Both  the  Venizelists  and  the 
Entente  ministers  in  Athens  were  in  despair. 
The  Cretan's  campaign  for  war  was  not  advanc- 
ing, and  it  was  useless  to  close  one's  eyes  to  the 
fact.  New  means  to  make  it  successful  must  be 
found  without  delay.  Venizelos,  therefore,  set 
about  devising  that  plot  which,  as  his  friend 
Pamicos  Zymbrakakis  had  written  a  fortnight 
before,  General  Sarrail  was  ready  to  forward. 

Meanwhile,  King  Constantine  was  engaged  on 
more  far-reaching  matters.  On  July  30  I  had 
telegraphed,  on  information  given  me  by  King 
Constantine  himself,  that  Rumania  would  enter 
the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Entente  before  a  month 
was  out.  A  week  later,  certain  of  the  Allied  min- 
isters in  Athens  confirmed  this  forecast.  It  was 
with  precisely  this  in  view  that  the  Greek  mon- 
arch had  sent  his  brothers  to  England  and  Russia 
— that  they  might  arrange  a  cooperation  between 

260 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

Greece  and  Rumania,  on  the  latter's  entry  into 
the  war,  by  which  the  two  armies  could  attack 
Bulgaria  from  both  sides  and  pierce  the  German 
line  to  Constantinople.  Even  more  keenly  now 
than  the  preceding  February  the  king  realized 
that  it  would  be  a  difficult  matter  to  swing  the 
people  of  Greece  to  war,  while  Yenizelos  con- 
tinued to  clamor  for  war  as  a  political  slogan 
rather  than  as  a  well  considered  plan  of  national 
action.  He  knew  that  when  war  was  declared, 
if  the  arrangement  were  successful,  the  Veni- 
zelists  would  cry  victory  and  that  those  opposed 
to  Venizelos's  political  ambitions  would  be  in- 
clined to  hold  back  on  this  account.  Once  more, 
therefore,  he  set  patiently  about  to  mend  the 
breaks  in  public  sentiment  which  the  Entente 
ultimatum  of  June  21  had  created. 

Now,  however,  the  task  was  more  difficult  than 
it  had  been  six  months  previous.  Again  he  called 
General  Moscopoulos  to  Athens  to  convince  the 
staff  and  the  officers  of  the  army  that  successful 
cooperation  with  General  Sarrail's  force  was  still 
a  possibihty.  He  attended  General  Manoussoy- 
annakis's  funeral,  at  Patras,  in  person,  and 
aroused  a  great  wave  of  patriotic  enthusiasm. 

261 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Because  the  Entente  had  conceived  a  mistrust  of 
General  Dousmanis,  chief  of  the  Greek  general 
staff,  and  Colonel  Metaxas,  the  ablest  tactician  of 
the  Greek  army,  King  Constantine  voluntarily 
granted  the  former  leave  of  absence  and  changed 
the  latter 's  post  so  that  neither  remained  in  a  di- 
recting position  in  the  Greek  staff.  More,  he  re- 
placed General  Dousmanis  by  General  Mosco- 
poulos,  an  ardent  Ententist  who,  as  head  of  the 
third  army  corps  at  Saloniki,  had  been  on  the 
closest  terms  of  amity  and  cooperation  with  Gen- 
eral Sarrail.  Everything  was  being  done  to  put 
the  Greek  military  organization  in  shape  to  work 
with  the  Allied  armies.  When  General  Dous- 
manis left  his  office  as  chief  of  staff,  he  turned 
over  to  his  successor  the  series  of  plans,  brought 
up  to  the  minute,  for  Greece's  active  cooperation 
with  the  Allied  armies  upon  which  he  had  worked 
since  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War,  that 
Greece  might  be  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to 
work  effectively  with  the  Entente. 

The  principal  instrument  upon  which  King 
Constantine  counted  to  secure  a  large  contingent 
of  soldiers  at  the  first  remobilization  call,  how- 
ever, was  the  national  organization  known  as  the 

262 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

"League  of  Reservists,"  formed  after  the  Balkan 
wars  among  their  veterans,  to  look  after  the 
families  of  such  of  the  soldiers  as  had  lost  their 
lives  in  these  wars;  to  assist  needy  comrades  to 
secure  work ;  to  maintain  them  while  incapacitated 
and  bury  them  suitably  when  they  died.  As 
there  are  no  pensions  in  Greece,  the  organization 
was  a  useful  adjunct  to  the  military  establish- 
ment. During  the  ten  months  of  mobilized  in- 
activity the  League  of  Reservists  had  grown  in 
extent  and  strength  by  assisting  the  families  of 
mobilized  men  who  had  not  the  means  to  support 
their  families  on  the  cent  a  day  paid  the  Greek 
common  soldier  in  the  service  of  his  country. 
After  demobilization  King  Constantine,  as  hon- 
orary president  of  the  league,  encouraged  its 
work  with  a  view  to  using  it  to  inspire  a  sentiment 
for  war  when  the  moment  should  come  that 
Greece's  entry  into  the  war  could  be  made  with 
a  reasonable  promise  of  a  successful  issue.  To 
this  end,  also,  he  even  planned  a  sort  of  swing 
around  the  circle  in  all  the  leading  cities  of 
Greece  to  urge  a  full  response  to  mobilization 
orders  should  they  come.  He  was  only  pre- 
vented  from   carrying   out   the   plan   by   a   re- 

263 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

opening  of  the  sinus  in  his  back,  which  had 
troubled  him  since  the  spring  of  1915. 

All  of  this  was  deadly  business  for  one  of  King 
Constantine's  temperament,  used  to  the  simpler 
method  of  command.  I  find  him  admirable  in  it, 
displaying  the  scrupulous  patience  of  the  impa- 
tient man  with  astonishing  skill  and  effectiveness. 
Never  once  did  he  lose  that  sense  of  humor  for 
which  he  is  remarkable,  or  his  cheerful  confi- 
dence in  the  eventual  success  of  his  plan.  Veni- 
zelos  charges  him  with  stepping  down  from  his 
throne  to  lead  a  political  party.  Perhaps  this  is 
true.  It  is  certain  that  to  accomplish  the  end  he 
had  in  view — the  conservation  of  what  he  believed 
the  vital  interest  of  his  country — King  Constan- 
tine  would  not  have  hesitated  not  only  to  step 
down  from  his  throne,  but  to  renounce  his  crown 
entirely,  if  need  were. 

Both  Princes  Nicholas  and  Andrew  have  in- 
formed me  that  their  reception  by  the  Entente 
authorities  in  Petrograd  and  London  was  in  the 
nature  of  that  accorded  to  Mr.  Brithng  when  he 
desired  to  volunteer  his  services  to  his  country 
after  the  Battle  of  the  Marne.  King  Constan- 
tine's offer  was  regarded  with  suspicion.     Prince 

264 


ANDREW,  PRINCE  OF  GREECE 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

Andrew,  in  London,  was  lectured  like  a  school- 
boy on  what  the  Greek  sovereign  ought  and  ought 
not  to  do  by  a  high  permanent  official  of  the 
Foreign  Office,  who  had  never  been  in  the  near 
East  and  knew  nothing  of  the  situation  in  Greece 
save  what  he  had  learned  from  interested  Veni- 
zelist  sources.  In  Russia,  Prince  Nicholas  fared 
better,  as  the  Imperial  Government,  still  playing 
to  secure  an  open  Dardanelles,  instead  of  hav- 
ing the  straits  closed  by  British  guns  on  Imbros, 
Tenedos,  and  Lemnos,  had  need  of  Greece  to 
carry  out  that  plan.  In  general,  however,  the 
negotiations  were  quite  as  unsatisfactory  as 
Serbia's  negotiations  with  her  Allies  for  permis- 
sion, in  September,  1915,  to  fall  upon  Bulgaria 
before  Bulgarian  mobilization  could  be  com- 
pleted. There  seemed  to  be  no  tendency  to  base 
a  large  scheme  of  decisive  military  operations 
upon  Rumania's  entry  into  hostilities.  Rumania 
was  to  come  in  and  carry  out  her  own  plans  of 
conquest  haphazard,  without  regard  to  the  pos- 
sibilities of  coordinated  military  action. 

Meanwhile,  the  Bulgarian  advance  toward  Ca- 
valla  continued,  the  Greeks  withdrawing  upon 
the  city,  transporting  their  own  war  material 

267 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

with  them.  On  August  26,  despite  the  wi-itten 
assurance  given  by  the  Central  empires  that 
the  Greek  cities  of  Drama,  Serres,  and  Cavalla 
would  not  be  occupied,  the  former  two  were  en- 
tered by  Bulgarian  troops,  and  the  Bulgars,  seiz- 
ing heights  around  Cavalla,  were  in  position  to 
take  possession  of  that  city  whenever  they  liked. 
This  advance  of  the  Bulgars  came  most  appropri- 
ately for  the  Venizelists.  His  followers  had 
planned  a  mass  meeting  to  take  place  in  Athens 
the  following  day,  the  anniversary  of  the  revolu- 
tion of  1909,  with  the  idea  of  reminding  the 
Greek  sovereign  of  the  events  of  seven  years  be- 
fore, and  in  a  certain  sense  as  a  threat  of  what 
Venizelos  could  do  if  he  chose.  The  meeting  had 
been  widely  advertised  and  well  prepared.  It 
was  attended  by  an  immense  crowd,  which  as- 
sembled under  the  windows  of  the  house  recently 
purchased  by  the  Cretan  in  Athens'  leading  resi- 
dential street. 

The  mass  meeting  was  to  be  a  test  of  the  results 
achieved  by  Venizelos's  electoral  campaign  for  the 
past  six  weeks,  a  trying  out  of  the  strength  of 
the  Venizelist  war  party.  As  such,  it  showed  the 
Cretan  very  strong  indeed,  probably  40,000  men 

268 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

gathering  in  the  streets  surrounding  his  residence. 
But  it  also  revealed  that  there  was  by  no  means 
that  unanimity  for  war  which  the  Venizelists  had 
led  the  Entente  to  believe  would  be  the  effect  of 
the  Cretan's  campaign.  In  his  speech,  carefully 
prepared  in  advance  and  read  from  the  written 
text,  Venizelos  seemed  throughout  to  be  prepar- 
ing the  way  for  another  revolution  like  that  of 
1909.  In  the  form  of  an  address  direct  to  the 
monarch,  to  be  adopted  as  a  resolution  and  pre- 
sented by  a  committee  of  the  meeting  to  King  Con- 
stantine,  Venizelos  publicly  tells  his  sovereign: 

You  are  the  prey  of  advisers  of  a  purely  military 
outlook  and  of  oligarchical  ideas,  who  have  persuaded 
you  that  Germany  must  be  victorious  and  who,  trading 
upon  your  admiration  of  the  Germans  whose  victory 
you  believe  in  and  have  desired,  hope  by  Germany's  vic- 
tory to  be  able  to  set  aside  the  liberal  constitution  of 
Greece  and  to  concentrate  in  the  royal  hands  the  power 
of  absolutism.  As  a  result  of  these  warped  ideas,  in- 
stead of  an  extension  of  the  territory  of  Greece  to  Asia 
Minor,  Thrace  and  Cyprus,  we  see  to-day  ]\Iacedonia 
invaded  by  the  Bulgars,  military  supplies  worth  tens 
of  thousands  of  dollars  surrendered  to  the  invaders, 
and  north  Epirus  in  danger  of  being  permanently  lost. 
We,  the  people,  by  this  demonstration,  declare  that  we 
disapprove  the  course  recently  followed,  and  insist 
upon  the  dismissal  from  around  the  king's  person  of 
his  present  sinister  advisers.  The  interjection  of  the 
king's  name  into  the  electoral  contest  constitutes  an 

269 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

internal  revolution  against  the  liberal  party.  The  na- 
tional unity  has  been  destroyed  by  thrusting  the  royal 
prestige  into  politics. 

Each  statement  was  a  cry  from  the  heart  for 
the  Venizelists,  astutely  conceived  to  place  the 
sovereign  in  the  wi'ong.  King  Constantine  had 
believed,  not  in  the  victory  of  the  Germans,  but 
at  most  that  the  war  would  result  in  a  draw,  as  he 
had  declared  to  me  on  December  4,  1915.  In 
speaking  to  General  de  Castelnau  on  December 
26,  he  had  gone  further  and  said  that  while  he  be- 
lieved it  impossible  to  defeat  the  German  army 
militarily,  he  could  readily  understand  the  defeat 
of  Germany  by  the  economic  and  iEinancial  pres- 
sure of  the  Allies.  As  for  Thrace  and  Asia 
Minor,  neither  had  yet  been  conquered  by  the 
Allies ;  nor  had  Venizelos  himself  as  prime  min- 
ister been  able  to  secure  any  definite  assurance 
of  tangible  concessions  in  these  fields.  The  "sin- 
ister  advisers"  to  whom  the  Cretan  referred  were 
General  Dousmanis,  Venizelos's  own  choice  as 
chief  of  the  general  staff,  and  Colonel  Metaxas, 
both  of  whom  the  king  had  already  relieved  of 
staff  service.  Dr.  George  Streit  was  probably 
also  meant,  a  distinguished  international  jurist, 

270 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

member  for  Greece  of  the  International  Court  of 
Arbitration,  who  had  been  Venizelos's  minister 
for  foreign  affairs  when  the  European  War  broke 
out.  He  held  no  pubHc  office  at  the  moment, 
and  was  merely  a  childhood  friend  of  King  Con- 
stantine,  and  a  devoted  patriot.  In  fine,  the  only 
advisers  whom  Venizelos  considered  proper  about 
the  Greek  sovereign  were  his  own  followers. 
Premier  Zaimis,  in  his  own  phrase,  he  "tolerated." 

As  for  the  interjection  of  the  King's  person- 
ahty  into  the  electoral  campaign,  it  is  considered 
in  Greece,  not  without  reason,  that  Venizelos's 
publication  of  his  two  memoranda  to  his  sover- 
eign, of  January  11  and  17,  1915,  had  been  the 
first  interjection  of  the  personality  of  the  king 
into  Greek  politics.  At  the  moment  of  Veni- 
zelos's speaking.  King  Constantine  was  engaged 
solely  in  the  business,  his  as  constitutional  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  army,  of  seeking  to  hold 
the  army  ready,  even  in  demobilization,  for  in- 
stant action  on  the  side  of  the  Entente  should 
Rumania  enter  the  war. 

The  most  striking  inconsistency  of  Venizelos's 
attitude  at  this  juncture  was  revealed  in  the  dec- 
laration which  he  made  me  for  publication  just 

271 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

before  his  speech  to  the  crowd  under  his  bal- 
cony. 

"Can  you  conceive,"  he  said  to  me,  speaking  of 
the  Bulgarian  advance  on  Cavalla,  "anything 
more  criminal  militarily  than  the  action  of  the 
general  staff  in  demobilizing  three  army  corps 
and  leaving  their  entire  artillery  and  other  sup- 
lilies  behind  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Bul- 
garians!" In  view,  however,  of  the  fact  that  it 
was  precisely  the  Entente,  in  close  cooperation 
with  Venizelos  himself,  who  demanded  not  only 
the  demobilization  of  the  three  army  corps  in 
question,  but  their  demobilization  in  so  brief  a 
delay  that  any  considerable  transport  of  war  ma- 
terial was  impossible,  Venizelos's  statement  ap- 
pears extraordinary,  to  say  the  least. 

The  conclusion  of  the  Cretan's  address  was 
equally  significant.  In  the  first  place,  as  leader 
of  one  of  the  political  parties  of  Greece,  he  for- 
mally recognized  the  Zaimis  cabinet  as  a  cabinet 
of  full  powers,  not  the  purely  business  cabinet 
upon  which  the  Entente  ultimatimi  of  June  21 
had  insisted.  In  the  second  place,  after  attack- 
ing the  Greek  sovereign  in  the  most  open  fashion, 
charging  him  with  sympathy  for  the  Central  em- 

272 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

pires,  and  implying  that  the  monarch's  course 
was  intended  to  nulHfy  the  Constitution  and  turn 
Greece  into  a  despotism,  he  seemed  to  lack  the 
assurance  of  sufficient- strength  to  go  further  and 
inspire  revolutionary  action  among  his  hearers, 
without  the  material  aid  of  Entente  bayonets  to 
back  him. 

The  reason  for  this  strange  inconclusion  to  the 
Cretan's  otherwise  inflammatory  address  lay  in  a 
circumstance  of  which  few  were  cognizant  at  the 
moment.^  Venizelos  had  arranged  with  Captain 
de  Roquefeuille,  the  French  naval  attache  and 
head  of  the  French  secret  police,  for  a  fleet  of 
some  thirty  odd  French  and  British  ships  of 
war  to  appear  off  the  Piraeus  simultaneously  with 
the  meeting  in  Athens  of  August  27.  It  was  ex- 
pected that,  in  the  consternation  so  formidable  a 
demonstration  of  Allied  naval  forces  must  in- 
evitably produce  in  the  minds  of  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  opponents  of  Venizelos,  the  latter, 
with  his  followers  already  in  mass  beneath  his 

1  "Everywhere  the  Venizelists  can  be  seen  working  furiously  to 
brlnp  about  an  uprisirg.  They  are  distributing  arms  and  money, 
and  in  certain  houses  of  Athens  they  are  installing  machine  guns. 
The  police  watch  this  go  on  but  dare  not  interfere."  Major 
Michael  Passaris,  "L'Entente  et  la  Grece,"  p.  82. 

273 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

balcony,  would  have  only  to  suggest  a  march  to 
the  palace  to  repeat  the  coup  d'etat  of  1909  and 
impose  his  will  upon  his  sovereign.  Under  the 
guns  of  the  Allied  squadron,  resistance  would 
scarcely  be  attempted,  and  with  one  bold  stroke 
Greece  could  thus  suddenly  be  swung  into  line 
with  the  Entente. 

Certainly  Venizelos  himself  had  all  the  nervous- 
ness of  a  man  planning  a  critical  step  during  the 
hour  I  spent  with  him  just  preceding  his  speech. 
The  air  was  charged  with  possibilities  which  every 
one  present  felt  were  not  materializing. 

"If  we,  the  people,"  Venizelos  concluded  his 
speech,  "  are  not  heard  in  these  our  resolutions — 
we  shall  be  forced  to  take  counsel  as  to  what  it 
is  best  to  do  to  minimize  the  ruin  which  awaits 
us."  ' 

It  was  late  in  the  evening.  The  Allied  fleet 
had  not  arrived.  Had  Venizelos  believed  for  a 
moment  that  he  really  expressed  the  views  of  the 

1  The  text  of  the  portions  of  Venizelos'  speech  here  given  is  a 
translation  of  a  summary  furnished  the  foreign  press  by  his 
secretary,  during  its  delivery,  which  I  checked  up  with  Mr. 
Venizelos  himself.  A  Greek  text  with  English  translation  was 
subsequently  published  by  The  Anglo-Hellenic  League,  in  which 
very  considerable  alterations  had  been  made  from  the  address 
as  pronounced. 

274 


THE  BULGARIAN  INVASION 

majority  of  the  Greek  people,  or  even  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  people  of  Athens,  the  arrival  of  the 
Allied  squadron  would  not  have  been  necessary 
to  the  success  of  whatever  plan  he  had  in  mind. 
As  in  1909,  the  crowd  would  have  marched  to 
the  palace  and  King  Constantine  would  have 
been  forced  to  yield  as  his  father,  seven  years  be- 
fore, had  been  forced  to  yield.  But,  as  Profes- 
sor Hayes  has  said,^  "the  son  who  succeeded 
King  George  was  adored  by  the  nation  as  the 
successful  leader  of  the  Greek  army  in  the  Balkan 
war."  Without  other  support  than  his  own  fol- 
lowers, Venizelos  was  forced  to  end  his  address 
in  anticlimax.  Disappointed,  puzzled,  uncer- 
tain as  to  what  it  was  expected  to  do,  the  crowd 
before  the  Cretan's  house  dispersed  no  wiser  than 
it  had  come. 

1  Prof.   Carlton   J.    H.    Hayes:    "Political   and   Social   History 
of  Modern  Europe,"  Vol.  II,  p.  517. 


275 


CHAPTER  XVII 

"the  warrior  king  unsheathes  his  sword" 

The  day  following  Venizelos's  speech  to  the 
people  of  Athens,  Rumania's  entry  into  the  war 
was  known  in  Greece.  The  anti-Venizehsts  ac- 
cepted the  challenge  of  the  Venizelist  meeting, 
so  long  announced  and  so  well  prepared,  and  at 
the  last  moment  decided  to  give  a  counter  demon- 
stration the  following  afternoon.  Handicapped 
by  lack  of  funds,  divided  among  themselves,  out 
of  spirit  with  the  prevailing  feeling  of  the  mo- 
ment when  Rumania's  abandomnent  of  neutrality 
was  announced,  it  was  generally  supposed  that 
the  loyalist  demonstration  would  amount  to  very 
little.  The  speakers  were  not  popular  orators, 
as  is  Venizelos,  used  to  swaying  vast  assemblages. 
There  was  no  special  inducement  for  an  audi- 
ence to  congregate — save  the  name  of  the  king. 
Venizelos  had  attacked  the  koumharos,  as  the 
Greek  soldier  calls  his  sovereign.  The  Greeks 
who  had  fought  under  the  "koumharos"  must 

276 


WARRIOR   KING  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

show  the  world  that  they  still  followed  his  leader- 
ship, no  less  for  peace  than  for  war. 

To  those  of  us  who  still  believed  Venizelos  the 
dominating  political  factor  in  Greece,  the  meet- 
ing of  August  28,  1916,  was  an  eye-opener.  It 
seemed  incredible  that  so  many  thousands  of  en- 
thusiastic men  should  fill  the  street  in  front  of 
JNIinister  Rhallys's  house  and  stand  for  hours 
while  the  aged  ex-premier  discoursed  in  a  voice 
that  could  not  be  heard  a  dozen  yards.  Virtually 
every  man  a  reservist,  when  they  marched  down 
Stadium  Street  to  the  demonstration  they  fell 
naturally  into  line  and  stepped  out  with  the  swing 
of  soldiers,  chanting  the  "Aitos,"  ^  the  spirited 
words  of  which,  "the  warrior  king  unsheathes  his 
sword,"  seemed  strangely  out  of  keeping  witli 
the  ostensible  purpose  of  the  meeting.  In  this 
gathering  an  element  was  present  which  the  Veni- 
zelist  meeting  had  lacked — the  small  farmers  of 
Attica  and  Boeotia,  in  their  gray  smocks  dusty 
from  the  road ;  they  had  walked  into  town,  start- 
ing before  daybreak  in  order  not  to  miss  the  dem- 
onstration. While  the  Venizelists  were  celebrat- 
ing the  anniversary  of  the  revolution  of  1909,  this 

i"IIo  Aitos" — The  Kagle,  ref<Tring  to  the  double-headed  eagle 
of  Byzance. 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

second  crowd  celebrated  nothing  but  their  de- 
votion to  the  soldier-sovereign.  The  "Chronos," 
a  newspaper  catering  principally  to  the  reservists, 
published  that  morning  a  picture  of  King  Con- 
stantine.  Many  of  the  demonstrators  cut  the 
picture  out  and  pinned  it  on  their  coats  as  a 
symbol,  almost  as  an  icon,  to  show  their  feeling. 
If  the  Venizelist  meeting  had  included  40,000 
men,  this  second  meeting  was  scarcely  less  vast, 
and  had  been  gathered  within  a  few  hours.  Had 
there  been  any  doubt  in  the  mind  of  King  Con- 
stantine  that  the  reservists  of  Greece  would  rush 
to  the  colors  at  his  call,  the  meeting  of  August 
28  dispelled  it.  His  fear  that  the  bitter  Veni- 
zelist campaign  had  split  the  fighting  forces  of 
Greece  into  two  opposing  camps,  and  thus  had 
impaired  the  strength  of  the  army  needed  should 
Greece  go  to  war,  disappeared  in  an  instant. 
The  two  meetings  did  more,  however.  In  his 
speech  from  his  balcony,  Venizelos  had  said  of  the 
Zaimis  business  cabinet:  "The  Liberal  party  are 
prepared  to  invest  this  cabinet  of  affairs  with 
their  own  political  authority."  In  other  words, 
by  accepting  the  Zaimis  govermnent  as  endowed 
with  political  responsibility,  despite  the  Entente 

278 


WARRIOR   KING  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

ultimatum  of  June  21,  Venizelos  made  it  possible 
for  Premier  Zaimis  to  undertake  the  responsi- 
bility of  conducting  war,  should  the  anti-Veni- 
zelists  also  consent.  Only  the  acquiescence  of 
the  Allies  was  further  necessary,  since  it  had  been 
by  their  demand  that  the  Government  of  Greece 
under  Premier  Zaimis  had  been  deprived  of  its 
constitutional  functions.  In  this  sense,  there- 
fore, the  two  meetings  admirably  served  the  pur- 
pose of  King  Constantine,  whose  preparations 
to  undertake  a  Balkan  campaign  in  conjunction 
with  Rumania  were  now  completed. 

In  another  respect  also  the  significance  of  the 
two  meetings  was  immense.  The  second  meet- 
ing in  particular  demonstrated  not  only  to  the 
Venizelists,  but  to  the  Allied  ministers  in  Athens, 
that  five  weeks  of  hard  campaigning  by  the  Veni- 
zelists had  accomplished  little  or  nothing;  that 
the  political  method  the  Cretan  had  employed  of 
attacking  his  sovereign  had  only  increased  the 
strength  of  the  king.  Had  there  been  any  cool 
head  directing  the  Entente  policy  in  the  near 
East,  now  was  plainly  the  moment  for  a  complete 
change  of  front.  It  was  evident  that  if  Venizelos 
could  not  cany  overwhelmingly  an  industrial 

279 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

center  like  Athens,  he  must  be  defeated  in  the 
rural  districts  of  old  Greece,  always  conserva- 
tive. For  myself,  I  may  say  frankly  that  up  to 
this  hour  I  had  believed  Venizelos  the  strongest 
man  in  Greece,  certain  to  carry  the  approaching 
elections  by  an  appreciable  majority.  Nor  was 
it  easy  for  me  to  admit  the  error  of  this  judg- 
ment. But  the  demonstration  of  August  28 
would  have  convinced  a  blind  man.  From  that 
moment  I  realized  that,  whether  wisely  or  un- 
wisely, Venizelos  had  misplayed  his  cards.  The 
Venizelist  policy  was  doomed ;  unless  King  Con- 
stantine  could  succeed  in  reaching  an  agreement 
with  the  Entente,  Greece  would  never  range  her- 
self on  the  side  of  the  Allies. 

It  was  with  this  in  mind  that,  after  the  loyalist 
meeting,  I  had  a  long  conversation  with  Sir 
Francis  Elliot.  I  knew  that  the  king's  only  re- 
luctance to  joining  the  Allies  at  this  juncture 
was  based  on  uncertainty  as  to  whether  at  this 
moment  he  could  obtain  a  full  military  showing 
by  a  call  of  the  Greeks  to  the  colors.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  the  meeting  of  August  28  had  def- 
initely disposed  of  this  objection.  I  knew,  more- 
over, that  King  Constantine  had  worked  long  and 

280 


WARRIOR  KING  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

carefully  with  the  idea  of  Greece's  entry  into  the 
war  in  conjunction  with  Rumania.  The  moment 
had  arrived.  It  is  true  that  the  negotiations  of 
Princes  George  and  Andrew  had  not  proceeded 
very  successfully  and  that  Rumania,  instead  of 
projecting  an  attack  on  Bulgaria  in  cooperation 
with  Greece,  had  begun  an  offensive  in  the  op- 
posite direction,  attacking  Austria-Hungary  in 
Transylvania.  Nothing  of  this  situation,  how- 
ever, was  irreparable;  a  shift  of  front  could  be 
effected  very  readily  the  moment  Greece's  entry 
into  the  war  was  decided.  Prince  Nicholas,  who 
had  succeeded  somewhat  better  with  the  Russian 
Government  than  his  brothers  with  the  French 
and  British  cabinets,  was  ready  to  leave  Petro- 
grad  at  once  for  Bukharest  with  this  purpose.  It 
seemed  worth  while,  therefore,  for  the  Entente 
to  attempt  a  final  understanding  with  King  Con- 
stantine,  and  for  King  Constantine  to  accept  by 
far  the  best  chance  that  had  yet  been  offered  him 
of  a  successful  campaign  in  the  Balkans.  These 
considerations  I  laid  before  the  British  minister. 
He  agreed,  albeit  he  had  little  hope  King  Con- 
stantine would  change  his  attitude.  I  asked 
about  a  guarantee  of  the  integrity  of  Greece. 

281 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Sir  Francis  Elliot  said  that  he  felt  sure  the  Allied 
governments  would  now  make  no  difficulties  on 
that  score. 

The  same  evening  I  motored  to  Tatoy,  where 
I  saw  Mr.  Zaimis,  the  prime  minister.  Al- 
ways an  Ententist,  he  agreed  that  the  moment 
had  come  to  strike.  The  king  had  just  been 
operated  upon  again  in  the  sinus  in  his  back,  and 
the  doctors  forbade  any  one  seeing  him  that  eve- 
ning. I,  therefore,  wrote  King  Constantine  a 
personal  letter  which  it  would  scarcely  be  proper 
for  me  to  reproduce  without  permission,  but  in 
which  I  tried  to  convey  my  own  conviction  that 
an  understanding  between  Greece  and  the  En- 
tente was  a  practical  possibility.  The  following 
day,  still  suffering  from  the  operation  but  as 
keen  as  ever,  he  received  me.  We  talked  the 
matter  over  thoroughly.  He  said  quite  frankly 
that  he  had  sent  his  brothers  to  London  and 
Petrograd  to  try  to  accomplish  some  more  effec- 
tive cooperation  with  the  Allied  governments 
than  seemed  possible  through  a  local  diplomatic 
representation,  evidently  more  devoted  to  for- 
warding the  interests  of  a  single  political  faction 

282 


WARRIOR   KING  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

in  Greece  than  to  advancing  the  mihtary  situa- 
tion of  the  Allies  in  the  near  East. 

"You  know  as  well  as  anybody,"  he  said,  "for 
I  have  told  you  so  many  times,  that  there  has 
never  been  any  question  that  Greece  would  not 
make  war  could  she  see  her  definite,  certain  advan- 
tage in  doing  so.  To  say  that  I  am  pledged  not 
to  make  war  is  nonsense.  Only  one  thing  has 
ever  moved  me:  that  has  been  the  good  of  my 
country.  And  up  to  now,  the  situation  has  not 
revealed  a  sufficient  certainty  of  advantage  to 
be  gained  by  Greece,  to  compensate  for  the  risks 
and  unquestionable  cost  in  hves  and  property 
bound  to  follow  our  entry  into  the  war."  He 
went  on  to  explain  that  it  was  by  no  means  ad- 
vantage in  the  way  of  territorial  aggrandize- 
ment to  which  he  had  reference — Greece  could 
not  be  bribed  to  go  to  war — but  advantage  in  the 
shape  of  such  military  dispositions  on  the  part  of 
the  Entente  as  would  create  a  reasonable  chance 
of  success  in  the  Balkans  in  favor  of  the  Allied 
powers,  including  Greece.  Simply  to  join  the 
Allies  for  moral  effect  and  to  accomplish  nothing 
by  it,  he  declared,  would  not  assist,  but  handicap 

283 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

the  Entente,  and  would  bring  a  definite  loss  to 
Greece,  uncompensated  by  a  corresponding  im- 
provement in  the  position  of  the  Greeks,  in  Greece 
or  anywhere  else. 

"Take  one  element  of  the  situation,  for  ex- 
ample," he  went  on — "an  element  of  which  no  one 
seems  to  think  at  all.  There  are  in  the  Otto- 
man Empire  over  a  million  women  and  children, 
as  well  as  men,  of  our  blood,  whose  lives  would 
not  be  worth  a  moment's  purchase  the  day  Greece 
decided  to  join  the  Allies.  It  is  not  at  all  the 
simple  choice  for  us  that  it  was  for  Rumania. 
Every  phase  must  be  weighed  most  carefully. 
Undoubtedly  the  presence  of  Bulgars  on  Greek 
territory  and  Rumania's  entry  into  the  war 
greatly  complicate  the  situation.  These  can  be 
regarded  as  new  elements  which  may  alter  the 
premises  upon  which  Greece's  policy  has  hitherto 
been  based — and,  I  am  convinced,  reasonably 
based.  I  do  not  say  that  this  is  not  the  case. 
But  I  do  say  that  whoever  would  not  be  most 
unjust  toward  Greece  must  understand  that  there 
are  more  elements  to  be  considered  in  our  case 
than  are  generally  thought  of — or  even  than  are 
generally  known."     More  than  this  as  to  his  fu- 

284f 


WARRIOR   KLNG  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

tiire  action  King  Constantine  would  not  give  out 
for  publication  at  the  time.  But  personally  he 
agreed  heartil}^  that  the  moment  had  come  for 
action,  and  he  expressed  his  readiness  to  take  the 
initiative. 

Upon  one  point,  however,  he  was  very  decided 
indeed.  "There  is  to  be  no  bargaining  Greece 
away  to  anybody,  either  now  or  at  the  peace 
conference,"  he  said.  "There  is  to  be  no  parti- 
tion ofjny  country — I  won't  have  it !  I  make  no 
other  condition  whatsoever,  but  I  want  that  one 
thing  plainly  understood.  The  integrity  of 
Greece  has  got  to  be  guaranteed.  Tell  your  En- 
tente friends  that.  Under  the  Constitution  I  am 
responsible  for  declaring  war.  I  shall  not  take 
that  responsibility  without  an  assurance  that  we 
shall  not  lose  even  in  victory." 

I  told  him  that  I  had  every  reason  to  believe 
that  this  guarantee  would  be  given. 

"All  right,"  he  replied.  "I  am  not  quite  so 
sure,  myself ;  but  I  shall  take  your  word  for  it  that 
you  know.  Now  how  do  you  think  it  had  better 
be  done?"  he  asked.  "Through  my  brothers  in 
Paris,  London,  and  Petrograd— or  through  one 
of  the  Entente  ministers  here?" 

285 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

To  me  it  seemed  better  that  the  proposal  of  the 
military  cooperation  of  Greece  be  made  as  for- 
mally as  possible.  I  told  him  so.  The  king  was 
of  the  same  opinion,  especially  since  his  brothers 
had  had  rather  a  cold  reception  on  their  mission 
abroad. 

"Very  well,"  King  Constantine  said,  finall3^ 
"Will  you  tell  Elliot  to  ask  for  an  audience  at 
once  ?  He  's  the  dean  of  the  Entente  diploma- 
tists, and  it  had  better  be  done  through  him.  Be- 
sides," he  laughed  in  his  kindly  way,  "it  will  be  a 
diplomatic  feather  in  his  cap — and  he  has  been 
here  a  long  time,  and  deserves  it.  We  '11  give 
him  the  credit." 

As  I  was  leaving,  the  king  referred  again  to 
his  one  essential  condition  of  the  integrity  of 
Greece,  and  to  his  constitutional  mandate  to  de- 
clare war,  if  war  were  to  be  declared.  "It  is  not 
a  question  of  my  deciding  what  we  ought  to  do 
under  the  circumstances  as  they  are  to-day,"  he 
said  very  seriously.  "It  is  a  question  for  all  the 
Greeks — in  Thrace  and  Asia  Minor  as  well  as  in 
Greece  itself — to  reach  a  decision  upon,  after 
maturely  weighing  the  frightful  price  that  must 
be  paid  in  the  event  of  war.     In  such  a  crisis," 

286 


WARRIOR   KING  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

he  concluded,  "we  want  the  voice  of  the  soul  of 
Hellas  to  dictate  the  future  of  our  race." 

I  returned  to  Sir  Francis  EUiot  at  once.  He 
was  delighted,  but  still  somewhat  skeptical.  I 
conveyed  to  him  the  king's  insistance  on  a  guar- 
antee of  the  integrity  of  Greece  as  an  essential 
condition.  "That  will  be  all  right,  I  am  sure,"  he 
said.  "But  do  you  believe  he  will  do  it?"  he 
asked. 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  "I  do." 

Sir  Francis  sighed. 

"It  will  add  ten  years  to  my  life  if  he  does,"  he 
said. 

We  talked  of  the  possible  governmental 
changes  necessary  to  the  constitution  of  a  cabinet 
for  war.  Sir  Francis  urging  that  the  king  call 
Venizelos  to  power.  I  told  him  frankly  that  I 
thought  there  was  little  chance  of  that,  but  that 
I  believed  the  king  would  accept  a  cabinet  with 
a  minority  representation  of  Venizelists,  includ- 
ing the  Cretan  himself  if  Venizelos  could 
bring  himself  to  accept  a  minor  post.  There  was 
talk  of  Nicholas  Caloguyeropoulos  as  a  war 
premier — an  Ententist  long  a  resident  of  France. 
But  all  of  this  was  more  or  less  discussion.     That 

287 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

night,  also,  I  told  Mr.  Droppers,  the  American 
minister,  precisely  what  was  on  foot,  for  the  in- 
formation of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States.  I  learned  later  that  Mr.  Droppers  went 
at  once  to  Mr.  Venizelos  with  the  whole  story. 

The  British  minister's  audience  was  fixed  for 
September  1 ;  M.  Guillemin,  the  French  minister, 
saw  the  Greek  sovereign  August  31,  the  day  fol- 
lowing my  own  conversation  with  the  king. 
Their  talk  did  not  forward  matters.  M.  Guille- 
min always  irritated  King  Constantine  who, 
suffering  now  from  his  operation,  was  inclined  to 
dislike  more  than  ever  the  French  minister's 
labored  subtleties.  Sir  Francis  was  to  be  re- 
ceived at  eleven  o'clock  Friday  morning,  the 
first.  To  be  certain,  I  went  to  Tatoy  myself  at 
half-past  nine  and  remained  with  the  king  until 
the  British  minister  was  announced.  The  king 
was  not  only  unchanged,  but  himself  had  worked 
out  a  tentative  cabinet  shift,  and  set  his  staff  to 
estimating  what  would  be  required  to  equip  the 
Greek  army  in  the  shortest  possible  time.  He 
wanted  Mr.  Zaimis  to  remain  as  premier  if  pos- 
sible ;  but  in  case  he  would  not  accept  the  respon- 
sibility, the  King  was  considering  a  purely  war 

288 


WARRIOR  KING  UNSHEATHES  HIS  SWORD 

cabinet  under  Admiral  Coundouriotis  or  General 
Moscopoulos.  At  my  question  about  a  Venize- 
list  representation,  he  replied  that  he  expected 
Venizelos  would,  as  a  minority  leader,  accept 
a  share  in  the  responsibility  of  conducting  the 
war,  and  either  himself  sit  in  the  cabinet  or 
permit  three  of  his  friends  to  represent  him  in 
it. 

"He  must  take  his  part  of  the  responsibility 
for  this  business,"  the  king  said.  "It  will  not  do 
to  have  his  crowd  standing  out,  trying  to  break 
up  the  army  and  making  things  difficult  by 
criticizing  the  Government.  He  has  been  cry- 
ing for  war  for  the  past  year;  now  we  are  to  have 
it,  he  must  put  his  shoulder  to  the  wheel  with  the 
rest  and  help  out." 

When  Colonel  Levidis  announced  the  British 
minister,  I  said  to  the  king: 

"Your  Majesty  will  broach  the  subject,  of 
course — otherwise  Sir  Francis  will  talk  about  the 
weather.  I  have  no  official  capacity,  and  so  he 
is  n't  supposed  to  know  anything  through  me. 
I  'm  just  a  butter-in." 

"I  understand,"  the  king  re])lied,  laughing. 
"It  will  be  all  right.     How  about  tlie  integrity  of 

289 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Greece?"  he  called  after  me,  as  I  was  going  out 
the  door. 

"Sir  Francis  says  he  is  sure  there  will  be  no 
difficulty,"  I  replied. 

On  the  way  out  I  passed  the  British  minister. 
He  interrogated  me  with  a  glance.  I  nodded. 
His  face  ht  up  with  satisfaction. 

An  hour  later  I  saw  him  at  the  British  lega- 
tion. 

"I  come  as  a  journalist,"  I  said,  "to  learn  if 
you  have  anything  to  say  about  your  audience 
with  King  Constantine  this  morning." 

"Nothing  for  publication,"  he  said,  smiling. 

At  that  moment  the  head  of  the  British  secret 
police  ran  up  the  stairs  two  steps  at  a  time,  evi- 
dently greatly  excited. 

"The  French  fleet  has  arrived  off  the  Pirseus," 
he  cried. 

Sir  Francis  Elliot  went  a  dead  white.  He 
turned  and  walked  slowly  up  the  stairway  with- 
out a  word. 

Once  more  Elephtherios  Venizelos  had  played 
his  trump  at  the  right  moment  for  his  own  game 
— and  the  wrong  one  for  the  Entente. 


290 


PART  III 
STARVATION 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE   SECOND    ULTIMATUM 

From  the  hour  of  the  arrival  of  the  Alhed 
fleet  under  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  off  the 
Pirseus,  on  September  1,  1916,  the  history  ot 
Greece  moves  with  the  rapidity  of  a  cinemato- 
graph reel.  The  implied  menace  of  so  formid- 
able a  naval  display,  even  had  it  not  been  known 
to  have  been  planned  in  conjunction  with  an 
attempt  at  revolution  within  the  country,  would 
have  been  sufficient  to  put  an  end  to  any  further 
negotiations  between  Greece  and  the  Entente 
for  the  latter's  participation  in  the  war.  To 
the  Greeks,  readily  led,  but  hardly  driven,  a 
military  cooperation,  spontaneously  conceived 
before  the  fleet  arrived,  became  well-nigh  impos- 
sible under  the  threat  of  the  French  admiral's 
cannon. 

It  is  my  conviction  that  the  British  minister 
was  not  party  to  this  latest  blunder  of  the  En- 
tente in  the  near  East;  but  it  was  exceedingly 

293 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

difficult  to  i)ersiiade  King  Constantine  that  be- 
tween my  conversation  with  him  on  August  29, 
and  his  audience  with  Sir  Francis  Elhot  on  Sep- 
tember 1,  the  latter  had  not  quietly  sent  for  the 
fleet  with  a  view  to  upsetting  the  sovereign's  plan 
of  joining  the  Allies,  by  aiding  a  Venizelist  coup 
d'etat.  This  suspicion  was  further  strengthened 
by  the  revolt  of  certain  officers,  including  the 
commander,  of  the  Greek  11th  Division  stationed 
at  Saloniki.  While  only  a  small  proportion  of 
the  command  deserted  the  Greek  flag  to  accept 
foreign  pay  on  August  30,  the  fact  that  General 
Sarrail  had  actively  assisted  the  revolt,  received 
into  his  forces  the  deserting  officers  and  men,  and 
caused  the  imprisonment  of  176  who  were  un- 
willing to  join  in  a  seditious  movement,  left  a  very 
sore  feeling  toward  the  French  general  among 
the  Greeks,  especially  among  the  very  officers 
who  would  be  called  upon  to  fight  under  his  su- 
preme command  in  case  Greece  joined  the  Allies. 
The  movement  in  Saloniki  was  led  by  Veni- 
zelists,  as  part  of  the  general  uprising  which  had 
been  planned  for  August  27,  but  which  had  failed 
to  materialize  when  the  Allied  squadron  did  not 
appear.     It  constituted,  of  course,  a  direct  blow 

294 


THE  SECOND  ULTIMATUM 

at  King  Constantine's  hold  over  his  soldiers,  as 
their  commander-in-chief.  It  was  calculated  to 
overtm'n  the  entire  discipline  of  the  Greek  army, 
thus  demonstrating  to  the  Entente  that  the  Greek 
monarch's  proffered  military  cooperation  was  of 
douhtful  value — unless  brought  about  by  Veni- 
zelos.  Its  failure  should  have  demonstrated  the 
contrary. 

To  those  of  the  British  and  French  legations 
in  Athens  who  were  acquainted  in  advance  with 
the  arrival  of  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet's 
fleet,  an  entirely  different  mission  for  the  Allied 
warships  had  been  played  up  by  the  Cretan  and 
his  followers.  A  campaign  in  France  and  Eng- 
land had  long  been  in  progress  against  Baron 
Adolf  von  Schenck  zu  Schweinsberg,  the  head  of 
the  German  propaganda  in  Greece.  Rather  an 
insignificant  figure  in  fact,  the  baron  had  been 
raised  to  a  pinnacle  of  diabolical  cunning  and  al- 
most superhuman  influence  by  the  more  sensa- 
tional British  and  French  newspapers.  The 
ground  thus  prepared  at  home  for  drastic  action 
against  the  German  agents  in  Greece,  it  was  com- 
paratively simple  for  Venizelos  to  suggest  the 
sending  of  a  strong  naval  force  to  Salamis  in 

295 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

order  that,  under  the  protection  of  its  guns,  the 
Anglo-French  secret  pohce  might  proceed  in 
safety  to  the  forcible  seizure  and  deportation 
from  neutral  soil,  not  only  of  Schenck  and  his 
particular  band  of  German  agents,  but  also  of 
every  Greek  whose  activity  Venizelos  found  in- 
imical to  his  political  campaign. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  political  astigmatism 
of  the  British  and  French  representatives  in 
Athens,  and  indeed  of  Venizelos  himself,  that  so 
much  importance  could  be  predicated  to  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  German  propagandists  in  Greece. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  Greece  even  more  than  in 
the  United  States,  the  German  method  of  pro- 
cedure had  succeeded  actually  in  alienating  rather 
than  acquiring  sympathy  for  the  Central  em- 
pires. Similarly,  however,  the  out-Germaning 
of  the  Germans  by  the  Anglo-French  secret  po- 
lice had  a  like  result,  the  greater  in  extent  because 
at  this  juncture  the  latter  organization  was  now 
plainly  so  much  stronger,  more  widely  extended, 
and  more  lavishly  supplied  with  funds  than 
Schenck's  had  been.  On  the  whole,  the  heads  of 
the  Anglo-French  secret  police  in  Greece  seem 
to  have  been  singularly  naive,  nibbling  the  bait  of 

296 


THE  SECOND  ULTIMATUM 

personal  notoriety  held  out  to  them  by  the  Veni- 
zelists,  and  blindly  playing  the  Cretan's  game  to 
the  prejudice  of  the  greater  stake  for  the  entire 
cause  of  the  Entente,  the  active  cooperation  of 
Greece  with  the  Allies,  carrying  with  it  a  i^orce 
of  250,000  trained  men  to  be  added  to  the  Allied 
Orient  armies.  The  diplomacy  of  two  years 
went  by  the  board  at  this  crisis,  that  the  head  of 
the  British  secret  police  might  have  what  he 
termed  ''the  best  time  of  his  life." 

No  time  was  lost  after  the  arrival  of  the  Allied 
squadron  in  putting  this  program  into  execution. 
The  same  night,  the  French  flag  was  hoisted  on 
the  four  German  and  three  Austrian  merchant- 
men interned  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  in  the 
neutral  waters  of  Keratsina  Bay,  and  the  officers 
and  men  aboard  them  were  arrested  and  taken  to 
one  of  the  Allied  warships  as  prisoners.  At  the 
same  time,  officers  of  the  Allied  squadron  took 
possession  of  the  Greek  Government's  wireless 
plant.  The  following  afternoon,  the  British  and 
French  ministers  presented  Premier  Zaimis  a 
formal  demand  in  these  terms : 

By  instruction  of  their  governments,  the  undersigned 
have  the  honor  to  bring  the  following  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  Hellenic  Government : 

297 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

(1)  The  two  Allied  Governments,  knowing  from  sure 
sources  that  their  enemies  are  kept  informed  in  various 
ways,  and  notably  by  the  Hellenic  telegraph,  demand 
the  control  of  the  posts,  the  telegraphs,  and  the  wire- 
less telegraph. 

(2)  Enemy  agents  of  corruption  and  espionage  must 
immediately  leave  Greece,  not  to  return  until  after  the 
end  of  hostilities. 

(3)  Necessary  steps  will  be  taken  against  Greek  sub- 
jects who  may  have  been  guilty  of  the  acts  of  corrup- 
tion and  espionage  above  mentioned. 

The  Russian  and  Italian  ministers  could  not 
bring  themselves  to  sign  a  document  of  this  extra- 
ordinary character.  Certainly  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  has  had  far  more  cause  to 
initiate  drastic  action  against  "enemy  agents  of 
corruption  and  espionage"  in  Mexico  during  the 
past  two  years  than  Great  Britain  and  France 
had  to  take  such  action  against  Greece.  It  has 
not,  however,  appeared  altogether  compatible 
with  the  independence  of  Mexico  as  a  sovereign 
state  that  any  such  action  be  even  contemplated. 
Indeed,  it  is  significant  that  no  attempt  was  made 
in  this  second  Entente  ultimatum  to  justify  it  on 
grounds  of  international  or  any  other  kind  of  law. 
Perhaps  it  was  just  as  well  that  no  justification 
was  attempted.  The  "sure  sources"  were  not  set 
forth,  and  the  British  and  French  governments 

298 


THE  SECOND  ULTIMATUM 

remained  sole  judges  of  their  alleged  sureness. 
The  test  of  the  guilt  of  the  persons  against  whom 
"necessary  steps"  were  to  be  taken  appeared  to 
be  the  mere  denunciation  of  the  Anglo-French 
secret  police;  whatever  was  to  be  done,  would  be 
done  without  trial.  Neither  the  principles  of  in- 
ternational law  nor  the  guarantees  of  the  Greek 
constitution  were  to  prevail  against  this  demand. 
The  Greek  sovereign's  immediate  acceptance 
of  its  drastic  terms  constitutes  at  this  juncture  the 
best  possible  evidence  that  his  proposal  of  Sep- 
tember 1  to  join  the  Allies  was  the  expression  of 
a  sincere  purpose  from  which  he  did  not  propose 
to  be  easily  turned,  however  great  the  provoca- 
tion to  revoke  it.  And,  indeed,  I  know  that  dur- 
ing the  long  period  from  his  first  conversation 
with  me  on  that  head  until  his  offer  had  been 
finally  rejected  on  November  19,  the  King  of  the 
Hellenes  did  not  cease,  even  when  the  defeat  of 
Rumania  was  assured,  by  every  means  to  seek 
to  find  some  combination  acceptable  to  Great 
Britain  and  France,  by  which  the  Hellenic  armies 
as  a  whole  could  take  their  place  beside  the  Allies, 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  while  he  was  well  aware  that 
the  ultimatum  of  September  2  would  only  em- 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

biirrass  him  in  his  effort  to  swing  Greece  to  the 
side  of  the  Alhes,  and  regretted  it  on  that  ac- 
count, he  did  not  regard  it  as  of  any  great  sig- 
nificance in  view  of  the  fact  that  he  expected 
hourly  to  take  similar  measures  himself,  as  a  loyal 
ally  of  the  Entente.  One  thing  alone  preoc- 
cupied him  at  this  period,  when  I  saw  and  talked 
with  him  frequently:  whether  or  not  the  Allied 
governments  were  dealing  honestly  by  his  pro- 
posal of  cooperation  and  meeting  him  on  his  own 
ground  of  complete  frankness. 

A  similar  feeling  of  mistrust  was  constantly 
stimulated  in  the  minds  of  the  Entente  ministers 
by  their  Venizelist  advisers.  During  the  negoti- 
ations which  followed,  Sir  Francis  Elliot  fre- 
quently asked  me  if  I  were  sure  former  ministers 
Streit,  Stratos,  and  Schlieman,  and  the  others  as- 
sisting King  Constantine  in  his  task  of  swinging 
Greece  to  war,  were  sincere.  Their  sincerity, 
however,  should  have  been  plain,  since  Dr.  Streit 
was  actively  aiding  King  Constantine  to  draft  the 
messages  confirming  his  proposals,  sent  subse- 
quently through  his  brothers  to  the  governments 
of  Great  Britain,  Russia,  and  France,  while 
Messrs.  Stratos  and  Schlieman  sacrificed  their 

300 


THE  SECOND  ULTIMATUM 

entire  political  standing  with  the  conservative 
party,  which  was  in  favor  of  peace,  to  form  the 
new  party — the  king's  party,  it  was  called — in 
favor  of  war. 

The  unqualified  and  immediate  acceptance  of 
the  ultimatum  failed  to  spare  Athens  and  the 
Pirteus  one  of  the  most  astounding  performances 
of  the  war.  The  heads  of  the  Anglo-French 
secret  police  had  not  got  the  fleet  to  Grqsce  them- 
selves to  retire  into  the  background.  'No  dis- 
position was  shown  to  await  the  action  of  the 
legally  constituted  Greek  authorities  to  fulfil  the 
terms  of  the  second  demand  of  the  ultimatum, 
despite  Premier  Zaimis's  recognized  pro-Entente 
symi)athies.  Instead,  several  cars,  one  in  par- 
ticular known  in  true  melodramatic  style  as  "the 
black  car"  loaded  with  professional  gunmen 
armed  to  the  teeth,  and  under  the  personal  di- 
rection of  a  British  officer  in  uniform,  undertook 
to  arrest  such  of  the  alleged  "foreign  agents"  as 
they  desired,  without  legal  warrant  or  other  au- 
thority than  that  lent  by  the  guns  of  the  Allied 
squadron  off  the  Pirasus.  Representatives  of  two 
great  nations  with  whom  inviolability  of  domicile 
and  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  have  been  the  ripe 

301 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

fruit  of  civilization,  openly  ignored  both  funda- 
mental rights  in  a  friendly,  neutral  country. 
Homes  were  entered  by  force,  "arrests"  were 
made  at  the  point  of  a  revolver,  and  the  persons 
so  arrested  were  overpowered  and  taken  into  cus- 
tody without  trial,  while  the  gunmen  employed 
in  this  ugly  business  rifled,  on  their  own  account, 
the  houses  entered,  of  jewels  and  valuables.  On 
the  authority  of  a  member  of  one  of  the  legations 
concerned  in  the  affair,  I  learned  that  three  of 
the  hired  gunmen  engaged  in  it  were  killed.  A 
veritable  reign  of  terror  was  begun  which  shocked 
not  only  the  Greeks,  aghast  at  such  conduct  on 
the  part  of  British  and  French,  but  the  British 
and  French  nationals  resident  in  Greece,  who 
were  witnesses  of  it.  The  English  especially, 
both  within  the  British  legation  and  without  it, 
registered  a  very  sharp  protest  against  methods 
of  this  German  sort.  As  a  result,  after  some 
seventy-two  hours  of  lawlessness,  the  illegal  ar- 
rests were  stopped. 

While  the  Venizelists  hastened  to  defend  this 
amazing  business,  especially  since  certain  of  their 
political  opponents  were  among  the  Greeks 
sought  by  the  Anglo-French  secret  police,  King 

302 


''^fg'p! 


THE  SECOND  ULTIMATUM 

Constantine  and  all  other  Greeks  were  outraged 
and  incensed  by  it.  Princess  Alice  of  Batten- 
berg,  the  English  wife  of  the  king's  brother, 
Prince  Andrew,  was  very  plain-spoken  indeed  in 
her  denunciation  of  the  conduct  of  her  country- 
men. 

"Xot  even  in  the  worst  daj^s  in  Russia,"  she 
said,  "have  such  things  been  countenanced. 
That  it  is  we,  the  English,  supposed  to  be  the 
protecting  power  of  Greece,  guarantors  of  the 
constitutional  liberties  of  the  Hellenic  people, 
who  are  doing  it  is  infamous !  I  am  certain  that 
the  people  at  home  would  not  tolerate  it  a  moment 
if  they  knew  what  is  going  on." 

Xaturalh^  this  whole  business  did  not  make 
the  Greek  sovereign's  self -set  task  of  joining  the 
Allies,  already  difficult  enough,  any  the  easier. 
Yet  with  signal  tenacity  of  purpose  he  continued 
his  efforts  to  get  all  of  his  officers  and  men  in 
hand  to  be  ready  at  the  call.  Admiral  Coun- 
douriotis,  the  admiral  of  the  Greek  fleet,  was  set 
to  consulting  with  Admiral  Palmer,  the  new  head 
of  the  British  naval  mission  in  Greece,  touching 
Greek  cooperation  by  sea  with  tlie  Allies.  Pre- 
mier Zaimis  was  not  only  busily  engaged  elabo- 

305 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

rating  the  details  of  the  proposed  arrangement, 
in  frequent  conference  with  the  Entente  minis- 
ters, but  took  steps  to  secure  to  his  cabinet  that 
pohtical  recognition  from  the  party  leaders  in 
Greece  essential  to  carrying  the  necessary  war 
appropriations  through  the  Boule.  No  sooner 
had  King  Constantine  decided  on  offering 
Greece's  cooperation  with  the  Entente  than  Mr. 
Zaimis  sent  to  Venizelos  to  ascertain  precisely 
what  he  meant  by  his  phrase,  "The  liberal  party 
are  prepared  to  invest  this  cabinet  of  affairs 
with  their  own  political  authority."  He  found 
that  statement  to  be  in  fact  somewhat  more 
sweejiing  than  the  Cretan's  real  intentions.  A 
condition  was  placed  upon  Venizelos's  recognition 
of  the  Zaimis  cabinet  as  a  responsible  ministry; 
namely,  that  the  elections  now  imminent  be  post- 
poned. 

It  was  of  course  an  admission  of  the  complete 
failure  of  Venizelos's  whole  electoral  campaign, 
to  impose  which  upon  Greece  the  Cretan  had  on 
June  21  inspired  an  ultimatum  from  his  Entente 
backers.  It  revealed  for  the  first  time  the  grow- 
ing weakness  of  Venizelos,  and  betrayed  that 
Venizelos    himself    was    aware    he    was    losing 

306 


THE  SECOND  ULTI]MATUM 

ground.  It  constituted  still  another  step  in  the 
maze  of  the  Cretan's  shifting  policy— his  first  re- 
fusal to  participate  in  the  elections  of  December 
19,  1915;  then  his  standing  for  election  himself 
to  a  Boule  which  he  declared  unconstitutional; 
and  finally,  after  claiming  that  the  only  legal 
elections  were  those  by  which  he  had  been  given 
a  majority  on  June  13,  1915,  demanding  new 
elections  a  year  later,  in  direct  contradiction 
to  his  previous  position.  He  now  insisted  that 
these  new  elections  be  postponed.  It  is  of  little 
consequence  that  the  reader  fail  to  follow  this 
rapidly  altering  policy — no  one  in  Greece  was 
able  to  follow  it,  either. 

IMr.  Zaimis  had  other  things  on  his  mind  be- 
sides the  political  tergiversations  of  Venizelos. 
He  was  willing  to  postpone  the  elections  if  the 
Entente  ministers  consented  to  it.  At  the  in- 
stance of  Venizelos,  they  did  so,  thus  nullifying 
their  ultimatum  of  June  21,  the  corner-stone  of 
which  had  been  the  demand  for  new  elections. 
On  the  satisfactory  arrangement  of  this  feature, 
Venizelos  agreed  to  give  the  support  of  the 
liberal  party  to  the  Zaimis  cabinet.  Similarly 
approached  by  Mr.  Zaimis,  ^Messrs.  Gounaris  and 

307 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Khallys,  the  leaders  of  two  factions  of  the  con- 
servatives, promised  a  like  support  of  the  Zai'mis 
government.  The  stage  was  set  for  the  final  act 
of  Greece's  neutrality.  Not  a  single  important 
voice  was  now  raised  against  Greece's  joining 
the  Allies.  Queen  Sophie,  herself,  the  Kaiser's 
sister,  speaking  of  the  imminent  change  in  the 
policy  of  Greece,  exclaimed  "How  can  it  be 
otherwise!"  Baron  von  Schenck,  with  whom  I 
talked  on  the  day  of  his  expulsion  from  Greece, 
declared  flatly  that  Greece's  entry  into  the  war 
was  inevitable.  The  Austrian  and  German 
ministers  were  so  persuaded  of  this  that  they  tele- 
graphed their  home  governments  advising  that 
the  United  States  be  sounded  about  representing 
their  interests  in  Greece  in  the  event  of  war,  and 
began  their  preparations  to  leave  Athens. 

On  September  6,  receiving  the  officers  of  the 
11th  Division  who,  in  the  revolt  at  Saloniki  on 
August  30,  had  remained  loyal  to  the  Greek  flag, 
King  Constantine  drove  home  the  lesson  of  disci- 
pline in  the  organization  of  an  army.  In  a  stir- 
ring speech  he  praised  those  who  had  remained 
faithful  to  their  oath,  concluding  with  the  state- 

308 


THE  SECOND  ULTIMATUIVI 

ment  that  "with  such  officers  and  men  we  are 
ready  to  face  any  enemy!" 

Thus  foreshadowing  an  early  declaration  of 
war,  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  Greek  arm}" 
gave  the  keynote  for  an  immense  military  en- 
thusiasm, whose  widespread  sincerity  assured  the 
king,  and  might  also  have  served  to  convince  the 
Entente  ministers,  had  they  known  how  to  in- 
terpret events,  that  the  military  brotherhood  of 
every  veteran  of  Kilkis  and  Janina  was  ready  to 
leap  to  the  colors  the  moment  King  Constantine 
gave  the  word.  It  is  beyond  question  that,  had 
the  cabinets  of  London  and  Paris  shown  them- 
selves capable  of  rapid  decision  at  this  juncture, 
had  they  been  free  to  accept  an  arrangement  with 
Greece  on  the  basis  of  a  guarantee  of  the  integrity 
of  that  country,  Greece's  entry  into  the  war  on 
the  side  of  the  Entente  would  have  been  a  settled 
fact  within  a  few  days. 


309 


CHAPTER  XIX 

A    CABINET   FORMED    FOR    WAR 

The  only  people  in  Athens  who  appeared  un- 
aware of  the  trend  of  events  early  in  September, 
1916,  were  the  British  and  French  legations  and 
the  British  and  French  newspaper  correspond- 
ents. The  latter,  used  to  securing  all  their  in- 
formation from  Venizelist  sources,  either  could 
not  or  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  work  up  new 
relationships  which  would  enable  them  to  follow 
what  was  afoot.  They  continued  to  fill  the 
London  and  Paris  dailies  with  increasingly  bitter 
attacks  on  King  Constantine,  treating  him  as 
an  enemy  to  the  Allies,  while  definite,  binding 
proposals  for  the  active  cooperation  of  Greece 
with  the  Entente  were  actually  under  the  con- 
sideration of  their  governments.  One  thing 
which  the  Greek  sovereign  never  understood  was 
why  the  British  and  French  governments,  both 
exercising  a  rigid  censorship  on  all  newspapers, 
far  from  quieting  this  clamor  during  the  discus- 
sion of  Greece's  entry  into  the  war,  seemed  rather 

310 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

to  stimulate  it.  Every  fact  about  the  practical 
aid  which  Greece  up  to  that  tinie  had  furnished 
the  AlHes  was  either  summarily  suppressed,  or 
distorted  so  as  to  show  that  the  aid  in  question 
had  been  rendered  by  INIr.  Venizelos,  against  the 
opposition  of  the  King  of  the  Hellenes. 

An  example  of  this  press  campaign  against 
King  Constantine  lay  in  the  interpretation  given 
his  speech  to  the  loyal  officers  of  the  11th  Di- 
vision, on  September  6.  Obviously,  after  a  dis- 
affection, however  trifling,  in  the  ranks  of  his 
army,  the  commander-in-chief  might  be  expected 
to  take  some  action.  His  army  plainly  would  be 
of  very  little  use,  either  to  him  or  to  his  future 
allies,  if  every  soldier  were  freely  permitted  to 
decide  the  foreign  policy  of  Greece  for  himself 
and  to  govern  his  loyalty  to  his  oath  as  a  soldier 
accordingly.  King  Constantine's  phrase  about 
readiness  "to  face  any  enemy"  was  very  evidently 
calculated  to  hearten  his  men  against  a  campaign 
in  which  the  redoubtable  military  force  of  Ger- 
many was  engaged — a  force  whose  prowess  eveiy 
Balkan  had  reason  to  take  seriously  since  the  ter- 
rible disaster  to  Serbia  and  Montenegi'o.  This 
was  actually  the  effect  upon  the  Greek  officers 

311 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  men  of  King  Constantine's  words;  yet  the 
London  and  Paris  newspapers  would  not  so  have 
it.  According  to  them,  a  discourse  on  disciphne, 
similar  to  that  made  to  every  squad  of  recruits  to 
the  United  States  army,  was  nothing  short  of  a 
flagrant  example  of  the  Prussian  militarism  of 
Constantine  I.  In  their  columns  King  Constan- 
tine  was  a  rabid  militarist  one  day,  and  a  cowardly 
pacifist,  afraid  to  fight  Germany,  the  next;  but 
every  day  he  was  hostile  to  the  Entente,  despic- 
able, and  ruled  completely  by  his  wife,  the 
Kaiser's  sister. 

This  sort  of  propaganda  did  not  relieve  the 
Greek  sovereign  of  any  of  his  fear  that  the  British 
and  French  governments  were  again,  as  in  Au- 
gust, 1915,  playing  a  double  game  with  him  in 
their  negotiations  for  Greece's  entry  into  hostili- 
ties. Moreover,  as  a  propaganda,  it  demon- 
strated that  the  Venizehsts  back  of  it  were  by  no 
means  so  ready  to  stand  behind  the  Zaimis  cabinet 
as  the  Cretan's  public  declarations  might  lead  one 
to  suppose.  To  those  watching  the  rapid  prog- 
ress of  events  in  Athens  at  this  juncture,  Veni- 
zelos's  acceptance  of  the  Zaimis  cabinet,  as  one 
endowed  with  political  functions,  appeared  sus- 

319 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

piciously  out  of  drawing  with  his  previous  atti- 
tude. Not  even  the  Cretan's  desire  to  have  the 
elections  postponed  could  altogether  account  for 
his  acquiescence  in  the  consummation  of  military 
cooperation  between  King  Constantine  and  the 
Entente  without  himself  as  deus  ex  machina,  A 
surprise,  therefore,  was  generally  awaited. 

It  came  on  September  9.  During  the  daily 
evening  conference  of  the  Entente  diplomatists 
at  the  French  legation,  several  shots  were  fired 
into  the  air  in  front  of  the  building,  and  a  cry 
raised  of  "Long  live  the  King!"  Those  re- 
sponsible immediately  fled.  No  damage  of  any 
kind  was  done. 

The  stir  which  INI.  Guillemin,  the  French  min- 
ister, made  over  this  so-called  "incident"  seemed 
to  every  dispassionate  observer  wholly  out  of  pro- 
portion to  the  importance  of  the  incident  itself. 
He  sent  at  once  to  the  admiral  of  the  Allied  fleet 
and  requested  a  legation  guard  of  armed  marines. 
He  demanded  instant  apologies  from  the  prime 
minister  of  Greece,  and  the  condign  punishment 
of  the  Greek  officer  in  charge  of  the  soldiers 
normally  acting  as  sentries  before  the  legation. 
Had  the  legation  building  been  riddled  by  a 

313 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

dozen  bullets,  he  could  scarcely  have  been  more 
exigent. 

The  "incident"  was  hailed  in  the  British  and 
French  press  as  well  as  the  Venizelist  newspapers 
of  Athens  as  "an  attack  on  the  French  legation." 
It  smacked,  however,  of  a  motion  picture  scenario. 
There  was  no  logical  reason  for  a  demonstration 
against  the  French  at  this  time.  All  the  loyalists 
and  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  Greek  army 
were  solidly  behind  King  Constantine  in  his  plan 
to  join  the  Entente — certainly  not  to  attack  the 
Entente.  The  only  dissatisfied  fraction  of  the 
population  of  the  capital  was  the  Venizelist  ele- 
ment. Judicial  investigation  ultimately  demon- 
strated that  precisely  this  element  had  been  re- 
sponsible for  the  "incident,"  conceived  with  the 
idea  of  embroiling  the  Zaimis  cabinet  with  the 
Entente,  thus  putting  an  end  to  King  Constan- 
tine's  negotiations  to  join  the  Allies.  The  stage 
managers  of  the  alleged  attack  were  shown  to 
have  chosen  the  French  instead  of  the  British 
legation,  counting  on  professional  jealousy  to 
move  M.  Guillemin  to  seize  the  occasion  to  block 
the  negotiations,  for  the  success  of  which  his 
British  colleague  would  obtain  the  credit.     What- 

314 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

ever  his  faults,  ]M.  Guillemin  is  scarcely  the  man 
to  be  influenced  bj'  such  considerations.  His 
action,  however,  had  the  desired  effect  of  block- 
ing the  negotiations. 

It  was  only  long  afterwards  that  the  hearing 
of  the  case  in  court  brought  evidence  to  light  in- 
dicating that  the  signal  for  the  firing  had  been 
given  from  a  window  of  the  French  legation  it- 
self. The  Russian  minister's  chauffeur,  an  eye- 
witness to  the  occurrence,  deposed  his  impression 
that  the  man  directing  the  affair  was  an  employee 
of  the  French  legation,  while  other  evidence  was 
adduced  to  the  effect  that  the  revolvers  used  in 
the  firing  were  returned  afterwards  to  the  office 
of  the  British  secret  police.  When,  during  the 
examination,  the  magistrate  charged  with  the  case 
questioned  M.  Guillemin,  the  French  minister 
asked  him  to  whom  the  investigation  pointed  as 
the  instigator  of  the  business. 

"To  your  Excellency,"  the  magistrate  rephed, 
dryly. 

Puerile  enough  in  itself,  the  effect  of  the  "in- 
cident" was  dire  and  far-reaching.  The  Venize- 
lists  at  once  spread  broadcast  the  fiction  that  the 
League  of  Reservists  had  plotted  murder.     Evi- 

315 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

dently  fearing  the  electoral  strength  and  loyalty 
to  their  commander-in-chief  of  these  veterans 
whom  Constantine  I  had  twice  led  to  victory,  the 
Cretan  and  his  followers  planned  to  break  up 
their  organization.  That  at  the  same  time  the 
king's  means  of  securing  a  full  mobihzation  in 
the  shortest  possible  time,  should  Greece  join  the 
Allies,  would  also  be  destroyed,  only  made  the 
Venizelists  the  more  anxious  for  the  dissolution 
of  the  League  of  Reservists.  They  desired 
nothing  less  than  that  Greece  should  join  the 
Allies  under  the  auspices  of  the  king.  In  this 
instance,  as  in  so  many  others,  any  suggestion 
from  Venizelos  prevailed  with  the  British  and 
French  ministers  over  practical  considerations  of 
direct  advantage  to  the  Entente.  Following  the 
"incident"  of  the  French  legation,  they  therefore 
demanded  that  the  meeting  places  of  the  League 
of  Reservists  be  closed. 

The  demand  was  accepted,  albeit  neither  Mr. 
Zaimis  nor  the  king  could  in  the  least  understand 
this  persistent  policy  on  the  part  of  British  and 
French  ministers  of  making  the  arrangements 
for  Greece's  effective  military  support  of  the 
Allies  always  more  difficult  by  constant  new  de- 

316 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

mands.  Immediately  following  the  "incident" 
Premier  Zaimis  expressed  in  person  the  regret  of 
the  Greek  Government.  King  Constantine  sent 
the  grand  marshal  of  the  court,  Count  Mercati, 
to  convej^  his  own  chagrin  at  the  occurrence. 
The  officer  in  charge  of  the  Greek  guard  was 
duly  punished.  But  none  of  these  things  satis- 
fied ISl.  Guillemin.  On  September  10,  a  platoon 
of  French  marines  was  landed  at  the  Piraeus  and 
marched  with  bayonets  fixed  to  the  French  lega- 
tion; another  was  sent  to  the  French  school,  the 
headquarters  of  the  French  secret  police.  The 
tricolor  was  raised  on  both  buildings  with  all  the 
circumstance  which  might  have  marked  the  estab- 
lishment of  two  French  fortresses  in  the  ancient 
city.  Less  temperamental  than  his  French  col- 
league, the  British  minister  found  these  precau- 
tions a  bit  theatrical  and  wholly  needless.  He 
refused  either  to  ask  for  or  to  accept  a  legation 
guard. 

The  "incident"  would  have  proved  of  only 
minor  significance  after  all,  save  for  one  fact. 
Premier  Zaimis  ordered  the  Greek  police  to  make 
a  rigid  investigation  of  the  affair  and  to  report 
to  him  at  once.     The  revelations  of  the  investi- 

317 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

gation,  afterwards  confirmed  in  court  during  the 
trial  of  the  culprits,  showed  that  the  notorious 
Cretan  bandit,  Paul  Gyparis,  a  follower  of  Veni- 
zelos  and  an  employee  of  the  French  secret  police, 
had  hired  ten  gunmen  to  carry  out  the  comedy, 
which  had  been  planned  in  the  Venizelist  head- 
quarters and  in  the  office  of  the  French  secret 
police.  Its  primary  purpose  was  to  enable  the 
French  minister  to  establish  a  strong  force  of 
armed  marines  at  his  legation,  within  two  hun- 
dred yards  of  King  Constantine's  palace.  The 
interest  of  the  Venizelists  in  the  matter  was  the 
closing  of  the  meeting  places  of  the  League  of 
Reservists. 

No  sooner  had  the  premier  learned  these  de- 
tails than  he  laid  before  his  sovereign  his  convic- 
tion that  the  negotiations  he  was  trying  to  conduct 
with  the  British  minister  for  Greece's  departure 
from  neutrality  could  not  under  the  circumstances 
be  sincere  on  the  part  of  the  Allied  diplomatists. 
A  singularly  direct  and  upright  man,  Mr. 
Zaimis  was  profoundly  wounded  at  what  he 
could  scarcely  help  regarding  as  the  duplicity  of 
the  French  which,  in  his  esteem  for  France,  he 
found  out  of  keeping  with  the  high  cause  for 

318 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

which  France  was  fighting  the  world  war.  He 
therefore  begged  the  Greek  monarch  to  release 
him  from  his  mandate  as  premier. 

The  King  was  reluctant  to  accept  INIr.  Zaimis's 
resignation  and  urged  him  to  remain.  The  Brit- 
ish minister  was  equally  upset  and  added  his  plea 
to  that  of  the  sovereign.  Mr,  Zaimis  frankly 
said  that  had  ^I.  Guillemin  been  willing  to  make 
a  formal  disavowal  of  the  whole  intrigue  and  to 
display  a  willingness  to  continue  negotiations  in 
a  spirit  of  candor,  he  would  consent  to  remain. 
JNI.  Guillemin  could  not  bring  himself  to  go  so 
far,  however,  and  King  Constantine  was  there- 
fore forced  to  seek  another  premier  and  another 
cabinet  and  to  recommence  his  efforts  to  reach  an 
understanding  with  the  Entente  from  the  begin- 
ning. 

To  the  Venizelists  this  was  a  triumph.  Each 
new  cabinet  overthrown  made  it  more  difficult  to 
secure  a  capable  premier  without  having  recourse 
to  Venizelos.  But  it  was  disheartening  business 
for  the  Greek  monarch;  and  the  Entente,  far 
from  aiding  him,  seemed  to  put  every  possible 
obstacle  in  his  way — probably  likewise  with  the 
hope  of  forcing  the  return  of  Venizelos. 

319 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

To  complicate  matters  further  the  Bulgarian 
forces,  camped  on  the  hills  commanding  Cavalla, 
suddenly  decided  to  enter  the  city,  in  defiance  of 
their  written  pledge.  On  September  10,  Colonel 
Hadjopoulos,  commanding  that  part  of  the 
Greek  fourth  army  corps  stationed  in  the  city, 
telegraphed  the  minister  of  war  in  Athens: 

"The  fourth  Greek  army  corps  at  Cavalla 
wishes  to  surrender  at  once  to  the  British.  The 
Bulgarians  threaten  to  bombard  the  city  to-mor- 
row, Monday." 

Owing  to  the  Allied  control  of  the  telegraph, 
his  message  was  necessarily  transmitted  by  way 
of  Saloniki,  through  the  British  admiral,  who  in 
turn  telegraphed  the  Greek  staff  in  reply : 

"Do  you  wish  me  to  permit  the  Greek  troops 
to  embark  on  Greek  ships?"  On  the  receipt  of 
this  enquiry  General  Callaris,  the  minister  of  war, 
replied  through  the  British  military  attache  in 
Athens : 

"Fourth  army  corps — Cavalla.  Transport 
yourselves  immediately  with  all  your  effective 
and,  if  possible,  all  supplies  to  Volo,  arranging 
transport  with  British  admiral.  Embark  prefer- 
ably on  Greek  ships,  but  if  none  are  available,  on 

320 


A  CABINET  F0R:\IED  FOR  WAR 

ships  of  any  other  nationality.     The  civil  author- 
ities and  police  must  remain  at  Cavalla." 

It  was  only  when  too  late  to  set  matters  right 
that  the  British  military  attache  admitted  to  the 
chief  of  the  Greek  staff  that  there  had  been  an 
undue  delay  in  the  delivery  of  these  peremptory 
orders  owing,  he  explained,  to  formalities  be- 
tween the  Allied  military  and  naval  authorities. 
Meanwhile,  however,  the  British  naval  officer  in 
command  proposed  to  transport  Colonel  Hadjo- 
poulos  and  his  troops  to  Saloniki.  Hadjopou- 
los's  orders  had  not  come.  The  experience  of 
certain  officers  of  the  11th  Division  who  had 
been  imprisoned  in  Saloniki  for  refusing  to  join 
the  Allies,  counseled  the  Greek  commander 
against  any  such  disposition  of  his  troops.  Some 
3400  men  and  80  officers  had  already  been  taken 
to  Thassos  by  the  French,  where  they  were  held 
as  prisoners.^  Both  men  and  officers  of  that  con- 
tingent have  since  informed  me  that  every  pos- 
sible pressure  was  put  upon  them,  during  their 
stay  with  the  French  on  Thassos,  to  induce  them 
to  desert  their  flag  and  join  General  Sarrail's 

1  Col.  Christodoulos,  who  afterwards  joined  Sarrail's  army, 
stated,  in  an  interview  in  the  Venizelist  "Elephtheros  Typos": 
"We  were  treated  as  enemies"  by  the  French  on  Thassos. 

3^3 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

forces.  It  was  evidently  fearing  precisely  this 
that  Colonel  Hadjopoulos  made  the  decision  he 
did.  First  he  proposed,  in  his  turn,  the  trans- 
port of  his  troops  to  Volo,  or  the  Piraeus,  or 
any  other  Greek  port  not  under  the  martial 
law  administered  by  General  Sarrail.  He 
could  obtain  no  assurance  that  he  and  his  men 
would  not  be  sent  to  Saloniki.^  The  delay  al- 
lowed by  the  Bulgarians  came  to  an  end. 
Rather  than  risk  the  disintegration  of  his  com- 
mand under  Allied  pressure  at  Saloniki,  he  sur- 
rendered 70  officers  and  800  men  to  the  Bulgar- 
ians. Meanwhile  the  French  commander  on 
Thassos  announced  his  intention  to  ship  all  the 
Greek  soldiers  who  would  not  enlist  with  the 
Allies  to  some  Greek  island  as  prisoners,  putting 
the  officers  who  refused  to  volunteer  to  join  Sar- 
rail back  on  shore  and  deliver  thern  over  to  the 
Germans.     Only  upon  the  insistence  of  Colonel 

1  "The  army  corps  commander  [Colonel  Hadjopoulos]  was  just 
embarking  on  a  small  English  vessel  when  suddenly  its  captain,  in 
spite  of  the  understanding  reached  with  the  Entente  agents,  de- 
manded to  know  in  what  quality  he  embarked.  At  the  same 
moment,  two  revolutionary  officers.  Major  Stavrinopoulos  and 
Lieutenant  Vacas,  covered  him  with  their  revolvers  and  cried  out: 
'Join  the  Saloniki  movement  or  you  can't  come  aboard !'  Exas- 
perated, the  colonel  refused  and  returned  ashore."  Major  Pas- 
saris:     "L'Entente  et  la  Grece,"  p.  85. 

324 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

Christodoulos,  himself  an  ardent  Ententist  and  a 
volunteer  for  Saloniki,  was  it  finally  decided  to 
send  officers  and  men  to  Volo  as  Colonel  Hadjo- 
poulos  had  suggested  and  as  General  Callaris 
had  ordered.  Of  the  80  officers,  72  declared  that 
they  would  remain  loyal  to  king  and  country  and 
were  ultimately  transported  to  Volo. 

Great  capital  has  been  made  of  this  action  in 
the  British  and  French  press,  with  a  view  to  show- 
ing the  hostility  of  the  Greek  army  officers  to  the 
Allies.  But  it  is  more  than  probable  that  had 
the  British  admiral  acted  promptly,  without 
injecting  the  question  of  joining  the  Allies  into 
the  matter  of  transporting  the  Greek  troops 
from  Cavalla,  Colonel  Hadjopoulos  and  his 
force  would  now  be  safely  in  Greece  instead 
of  in  Silesia.  As  in  the  case  of  the  surrender 
of  Fort  Rupel,  the  Allied  military  author- 
ities seem  to  have  taken  the  chance  that  when 
faced  with  the  choice  of  joining  General  Sarrail's 
army  or  giving  way  before  the  Bulgars,  the 
Greeks  would  choose  the  former.  On  every  oc- 
casion, however,  the  Greeks  have  seen  through 
this  intention  and  rather  than  be  tricked  into  a 
course  they  have  not  deliberately  chosen,  have 

325 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

chosen  a  course  nullifying  the  Entente's  calcu- 
lations. 

In  general  it  may  be  rerrjarked  that  if  it  was 
an  error  from  the  beginning  to  attempt  to  coerce 
the  Greeks,  it  was  doubly  so  to  try  to  outwit  them. 
Familiar  through  five  centuries  with  the  oriental 
duplicity  of  the  Turk,  the  transparent  subtleties 
of  British  and  French  diplomacy  in  the  near  East 
appeared  to  them  childish,  and  frequently 
achieved  just  the  opposite  of  what  was  intended. 

Nevertheless,  the  surrender  of  Colonel  Hadjo- 
poulos's  force  to  the  Bulgars  raised  a  great  hue 
and  cry  throughout  Greece.  Not  the  least  of 
those  enraged  by  the  event  was  King  Constantine. 
I  saw  him  for  a  moment  just  after  the  news 
reached  him.  His  is,  on  occasions,  the  language 
of  a  soldier,  as  forcible  and  picturesque  as  that  of 
any  trooper.  This  was  such  an  occasion.  Col- 
onel Hadjopoulos,  the  Germans,  the  Bulgars, 
General  Sarrail,  the  British  admiral,  and  a  few 
others — all  came  in  for  an  impartial  display  of 
verbal  fireworks  which  I  have  seldom  seen 
equaled.  What  annoyed  him  most  was  that  the 
incident,  like  that  of  the  alleged  attack  on  the 
French  legation,  gave  a  handle  to  those  opposing 

326 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

the  arrangements  which  he  was  bending  every 
energy  to  complete  with  the  Entente.  A  high 
permanent  official  of  the  Greek  Govermiient,  who 
is  both  an  ardent  Ententist  and  a  Venizelist,  at 
thi«  juncture  expressed  the  general  sentiment  in 
Greece : 

"I  hope  the  Entente  now  sees,"  he  said,  "where 
the  pohcy  of  trying  to  force  matters  leads.  The 
moral  effect  of  Greece's  joining  the  Allies  would 
unquestionably  be  to  shorten  the  war  by  many 
months.  But  without  an  unpolitical  figure  like 
Zaimis  to  conduct  the  negotiations,  there  is 
scarcely  a  ghost  of  a  chance  that  the  matter  can 
be  arranged. 

"God  knows  nobody  in  Greece  has  opposed  our 
entry  into  the  war  for  the  last  fortnight.  If  we 
do  not  enter,  the  responsibility  must  fall  upon 
those  who  have  been  too  impatient  to  await  the 
end  of  a  legitimate  discussion  of  details." 

Not  w^ithout  difficulty  was  King  Constantine 
able  to  secure  another  Ententist,  Mr.  Nicholas 
Dimitricopoulos,  to  take  up  Mr.  Zaimis's  task. 
The  new  premier's  first  act  was  to  consult  the 
Allied  ministers  as  to  the  constitution  of  his  cabi- 
net and  the  powers  it  should  exercise.     Declar- 

327 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ing  himself  frankly  in  favor  of  war,  he  desired 
two  things  to  make  his  ground  sure:  the  same 
political  recognition  that  had  been  accorded  the 
Zaimis  cabinet  and,  that  there  might  be  no  ques- 
tion of  the  popular  verdict  for  war,  immediate 
compliance  with  the  provision  of  the  Allied  ulti- 
matum of  June  21  regarding  the  holding  of  new 
elections. 

This  was  far  from  suiting  the  book  of  the  Veni- 
zelists.  Now  as  anxious  to  put  off  elections  as 
he  had  previously  been  ready  to  insist  upon  them, 
the  Cretan  concentrated  all  his  influence  against 
an  AUied  recognition  of  Mr.  Dimitricopoulos  as 
prime  minister.  He  succeeded,  and  the  British 
and  French  ministers,  despite  Mr.  Dimitricopou- 
los's  candid  war  program,  vetoed  the  selection  of 
him  as  head  of  the  new  government.  It  is  a  httle 
difficult  to  see  just  how  they  expected  a  premier 
to  bind  Greece  in  an  alliance  for  war  while  deny- 
ing him  the  power  to  bind  Greece  to  anything. 
I  doubt  if  the  two  diplomatists  considered  this, 
however.  It  is  probable  that  they  hoped  by  re- 
fusing to  recognize  Mr.  Dimitricopoulos  to  force 
the  king  at  last  to  turn  to  Venizelos.  To  make 
this  more  certain,  they  let  it  be  known  that  the 

828 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

Entente  would  not  recognize  as  premier  former 
prime  ministers  Gounaris,  Rhallys,  or  Skou- 
loudis,  or  ex-]Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  Dr. 
George  Streit,  or  even  the  leader  of  "the  king's 
party"  for  war,  ex-:Minister  of  ^Marine  Nicholas 
Stratos. 

In  the  face  of  this  wholesale  embargo  on  the 
political  talent  of  Greece,  King  Constantine  was 
in  a  quandary.  His  problem  was  two-fold:  to 
satisfy  the  Allied  diplomatists  and  at  the  same 
time  to  find  a  man  of  sufficient  political  standing 
to  be  able  to  manage  the  Boule.  For  the  latter 
purpose,  Venizelos  was  out  of  the  question,  as  the 
Boule  was  almost  unanimous  against  him — and 
the  Entente  would  not  permit  new  elections  by 
which  another  Boule  could  be  chosen.  Yet  a 
declaration  of  war  without  the  support  of  the 
Boule  would  be  unquestionably  a  denial  of  every 
principle  of  democracy.  Had  King  Constantine 
been  willing,  as  Venizelos  evidently  w^s,  to  set  up 
a  virtual  dictatorship,  no  doubt  he  could  have 
managed  it;  but  the  Greek  monarch  clung*  tena- 
ciously  to  constitutional  rule  and  could  not  be 
persuaded  to  overstep  the  constitutional  limits  of 
his  power. 

329 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  British  and  French  ministers  treated  this 
problem  of  practical  democracy  as  if  the  elected 
representatives  of  the  Greek  people  were  of  no 
earthly  consequence.  The  king,  therefore,  de- 
cided that  the  next  premier  he  chose  should  form 
a  cabinet  to  take  care  of  this  phase  of  the  situa- 
tion, whether  its  membership  pleased  the  Entente 
or  not.  He  selected  Nicholas  Caloguyeropoulos 
to  continue  the  negotiations  for  Greece's  joining 
the  Entente.  Caloguyeropoulos  was  an  ardent 
Francophile,  a  doctor  of  laws  of  Paris,  and 
long  a  resident  of  Marseilles,  with  close  business 
and  personal  ties  in  England.  To  handle  the 
Boule,  the  King  suggested  that  the  anti-war 
party  in  that  body  be  given  a  minority  represen- 
tation in  the  ministry,  but  that  the  majority  be 
pledged  in  advance  to  reach  an  alliance  with  the 
Allies.  Three  of  the  ministers,  Lysander  Kaf- 
tanzhoglo,  Demitrios  Vocotopoulos,  and  Lucas 
Ruphos,  were  therefore  chosen  from  the  number 
of  the  deputies  opposed  to  war;  the  remainder 
of  the  cabinet,  also  members  of  parliament,  were 
ready  to  follow  Premier  Caloguyeropoulos  in 
joining  the  Entente.  As  deputies,  all  were  di- 
rectly responsible  to  their  electors,  constituting 

330 


A  CABINET  FORMED  FOR  WAR 

thereby  a  cabinet  responsible  to  the  people  with- 
out necessitating  the  fiction  of  securing  the  en- 
dorsement of  the  various  party  leaders.  It  was 
significant  that  all  three  ministers  opposed  to 
war  were  men  with  whom  the  word  of  the  king 
would  have  been  sufficient  to  change  their  atti- 
tude when  the  moment  for  action  arrived. 

What  was  of  more  significance  than  an}i;hing 
else,  however,  was  the  action  of  King  Constan- 
tine  himself  at  this  juncture.  The  moment  he 
secured  Nicholas  Dimitricopoulos  to  form  a  war 
cabinet,  he  did  not  even  await  the  completion  of 
the  ministry.  At  once  he  telegraphed  his  broth- 
ers, the  Princes  George,  Nicholas,  and  Andrew, 
then  in  Paris,  Petrograd,  and  London,  to  give  the 
goverimients  of  the  three  powers  his  personal 
word  that  his  one  purpose  was  active  military  co- 
operation with  the  Allies  in  a  campaign  against 
Bulgaria,  and  in  his  name,  as  constitutional  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  land  and  naval  forces  of 
Greece,  to  offer  formally  the  full  assistance  of 
Greece,  on  the  terms  already  outlined  to  Sir 
Francis  Elliot,  that  is,  on  the  basis  of  a  guarantee 
of  the  integrity  of  Hellas. 

I  have  myself  seen  the  original  message,  and 
331 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

it  is  beyond  dispute  that  by  it  King  Constantine 
intended  to  and  did  bind  himself  definitely  to  the 
cause  of  the  Entente.  There  could  be  no  turn- 
ing back.  The  governments  of  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Russia  had  only  to  accept  the  offer 
to  conclude  the  arrangements  for  Greece's  entry 
into  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies. 


SS2 


CHAPTER  XX 

^'ENIZELOS   DECLAKES   REVOLUTION 

Prince  Nicholas  has  described  to  me  the  de- 
hght  of  the  Russian  Government  with  King  Con- 
stantine's  proposal.     They  suggested,  however, 
that  the  proposal  be  made  officially  through  the 
prime  minister  and  cabinet  of  Greece.     Prince 
Nicholas  so  telegraphed  his  brother.     This  was 
precisely  what  King  Constantine  desired  to  do, 
but  was  prevented  by  the  delays  in  forming  a 
cabinet  satisfactory  to  the  Entente  ministers  in 
Athens.     The    Caloguyeropoulos    cabinet    was 
sworn  in  on  September  16.     Its  first  act  was 
to  draft  a  formal  proposal  of  alliance  between 
Greece  and  the  Entente  which  was  forwarded 
to  London,  Paris,  and  Petrograd  on  September 
18.     The  same  day  that  this  was  done,  King 
Constantine  called  to  the  palace  Demitrios  Kalo- 
pothakis,  the  editor  of  the  "Embros,"  the  leading 
independent  newspaper  of  Greece,  and  requested 
him  to  begin  a  campaign  favoring  war,  in  the 

333 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

columns  of  the  *'Embros,"  thus  facihtating  the 
Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet  in  its  effort  to  secure 
the  support  of  sufficient  deputies  in  the  Boule  to 
provide  for  a  vote  of  war  credits. 

The  Venizelists  were  ignorant  of  none  of  these 
steps  toward  a  complete  understanding  between 
King  Constantine  and  the  Allies.  The  success 
of  the  negotiations  meant  to  them  merely  that, 
in  the  event  of  war,  Venizelos  would  not  be  in  a 
position  to  distribute  offices  and  army  contracts 
to  his  followers.  They  saw  their  dreams  of 
wealth  and  power  fade.  Backs  to  the  wall,  they 
fought  with  every  weapon  the  consummation  of 
the  king's  plans. 

In  this,  the  British  and  French  journalists  in 
Athens  were  of  the  greatest  aid  to  the  Cretan. 
Taking  their  cue  from  the  Venizelist  press,  they 
flooded  London,  Paris,  and  Petrograd  with  ar- 
ticles impeaching  the  sincerity  of  the  Greek 
monarch's  attitude  and  arraigning  the  Caloguy- 
eropoulos cabinet  as  pro-German,  because  of  the 
presence  in  it  of  three  minority  members  opposed 
to  war.  Every  spoken  or  published  word  of  these 
three  men  in  criticism  of  the  Entente  was  dug 
out  by  Venizelos  and  turned  over  to  the  press 

334 


VENIZELOS  DECLARES  REVOLUTION 

representatives  of  the  Entente  countries,  to  be 
telegraphed  abroad  as  indicating  the  hostility  to 
the  Allies  of  the  entire  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet, 
While  the  chancelleries  of  London,  Paris,  and 
Petrograd  were  aware  how  far  King  Constantine 
had  gone  toward  joining  the  Allied  forces,  they 
kept  their  knowledge  secret.  At  the  same  time 
they  permitted  the  press  to  spread  broadcast  the 
impression  that  the  attitude  of  the  Greek  sover- 
eign was  precisely  the  contrary. 

This  impression  was  also  reflected  in  the  United 
States.  Certain  New  York  dailies  have  arrange- 
ments for  republishing  despatches  to  certain 
London  newspapers.  Thus  those  from  Greece 
are  innocently  handed  out  to  the  American  pub- 
lic, ignorant  of  the  springs  of  intrigue  beneath 
them.  To  aid  in  his  press  propaganda  against 
the  cooperation  of  Greece  and  the  Entente  with- 
out his  intermediation,  Venizelos  established  a 
new  daily  in  Athens,  the  "Elephtheros  Typos." 
Its  presses  were  ordered  in  New  York  and 
paid  for  with  French  money,  to  the  tune  of 
$14,000;  its  editor,  previously  a  needy  refugee 
from  Constantinople,  suddenly  blossomed  forth 
arrayed  like  the  lily  of  the  field.     Venizelos  him- 

335 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

self,  who  had  come  from  Crete  seven  years  before 
with  holes  in  the  seat  of  his  trousers,  and  whose 
entire  salary,  during  his  continuous  period  of 
office-holding,  would  not  total  $20,000,  suddenly 
purchased  a  house  on  Athens's  most  fashionable 
residence  street,  which  was  valued  at  $160,000. 

Against  a  treasure  chest  of  these  proportions 
Premier  Caloguyeropoulos,  like  every  political 
figure  in  modern  Greek  history,  save  Venizelos, 
a  man  of  modest  means,  struggled  at  a  handicap 
to  present  the  truth  about  his  cabinet.  He  made 
little  headway.  Caloguyeropoulos  was  a  pro- 
German;  the  "Embros,"  supporting  the  king's 
war  policy,  was  in  the  pay  of  Baron  von  Schenck 
(long  since  unable  to  pay  anybody) ;  King  Con- 
stantine  was  playing  for  time  until  Rumania 
could  be  crushed — thus  the  chorus  of  the  Veni- 
zelist  faithful  was  dimied  into  the  ears  of  the 
British  and  French  public.  And  all  that  time, 
King  Constantine,  his  cards  on  the  table,  was 
waiting  replies  from  London,  Paris,  and  Petro- 
grad  to  his  offer  to  join  the  Allies. 

The  formal  proposal  made  by  Foreign  Minis- 
ter Carapanos  on  September  18  was  somewhat 
more   comprehensive   than  the   king's   informal 

336 


VENIZELOS  DECLARES  REVOLUTION 

one.  Ill  brief,  the  conditions  were:  a  guarantee 
of  the  integrity  of  Greece ;  that  the  Greek  army 
should  be  put  upon  such  a  footing,  in  respect  to 
equipment  and  munitions,  as  to  be  able  to  wage 
effective  war,  as  war  had  developed  during  the 
past  two  years,  before  being  called  upon  to  take 
active  part  in  the  hostilities;  and  finally, — as  an 
observation,  not  as  a  condition, — that  no  dispo- 
sition should  be  made  of  Thrace  or  Asia  ]Minor 
after  the  war  without  consulting  Greece  as  one 
of  the  powers  to  decide  the  fate  of  these  provinces. 
In  communicating  to  me  these  terms.  Premier 
Caloguyeropoulos  said: 

All  that  is  really  essential  is  what  King  Constantine 
has  already  told  you,  namely,  the  guarantee  of  the  in- 
integrity  of  Greece.  That  our  army  shall  be  properly 
equipped  is  as  much  to  the  interest  of  the  Allies  as  it  is 
to  ours.  We  are  ready  to  enter  the  war  with  our  bare 
fists  if  need  be,  but  it  is  to  nobody's  advantage  that  we 
declare  war  unprepared.  As  for  Thrace  and  Asia 
Minor — we  ask  no  promises  of  concessions;  but  owing 
to  the  large  proportion  of  Greeks  inhabiting  this  ter- 
ritory we  think  that  Greece  should  be  party  to  any 
discussion  of  its  final  disposition.  I  may  add  that,  for 
the  sake  of  the  millions  of  Greeks  who  still  live  in  the 
Ottoman  Empire,  we  suggested  that  the  negotiations 
remain  confidential  until  an  agreement  should  be 
reached.  AL  Briand,  however,  objected  to  this,  and  we 
have  accordingly  waived  it. 

Of  the  campaign  in  the  foreign  press  against 
337 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

King    Constantine    and    the    new    cabinet,    the 
premier  said : 

I  can't  understand  it !  Nothing  could  be  more  un- 
just to  King  Constantine  than  these  persistent  asser- 
tions that  he  is  pro-German.  He  is  pro-Greek  and 
only  pro-Greek.  He  is  the  last  man  in  Greece  to  be 
moved  by  any  prejudice  of  ready  made  opinion,  what- 
soever. 

At  the  same  time  Premier  Caloguyeropoulos 
sent  the  Bulgarian  Government  a  peremptory 
note  demanding  the  liberation  of  Colonel  Had- 
jopoulos  and  his  men,  then  held  as  prisoners  at 
Phillippopolis.  This  demand  was  calculated  to 
serve  as  a  basis  of  a  declaration  of  war  the  mo- 
ment the  Entente  powers  accepted  King  Con- 
stantine's  proposals.  The  acceptance  seemed  far 
away,  however,  the  Allied  governments  continu- 
ing to  embarrass  negotiations  by  obstinately  re- 
fusing to  recognize  the  existence  of  the  Caloguy- 
eropoulos cabinet. 

Their  attitude  was  time  gained  for  the  Venize- 
lists,  who  were  in  a  panic  at  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  preparations  for  leaving  neutrality 
were  proceeding.  At  the  behest  of  Venizelos, 
emissaries,  charged  to  stir  up  a  revolt  against 
King    Constantine    and    his    government,    left 


VENIZELOS  DECLARES  REVOLUTION 

Athens  for  Crete  and  the  out  islands.  For  this 
treasonable  purpose  the  islands  were  chosen  in- 
stead of  the  mainland  of  Greece,  because  their 
populations  had  so  recently,  become  Greek  citi- 
zens that  they  were  as  yet  unimbued  with  any 
abiding  sense  of  civic  consciousness.  During  the 
ninetj"  years  that  the  predecessors  of  Venizelos 
had  been  building  up  in  continental  Greece  a 
democratic  state  founded  upon  the  responsibility 
of  citizenship,  some  half  million  denizens  of  the 
out  islands,  of  whom  Venizelos  was  one,  had 
known  only  revolution  as  means  of  political  ac- 
tion. It  was,  therefore,  natural  enough  that  in 
their  failure  to  halt  King  Constantine's  negotia- 
tions with  the  Allied  powers  by  constitutional 
means,  Venizelos  and  his  followers  should  turn  to 
the  lawless  method  of  armed  revolt. 

It  was  impossible  for  any  one  in  Athens  at  this 
time  to  remain  long  ignorant  of  the  preparations 
for  revolution.  On  September  20,  I  asked  Veni- 
zelos point  blank  whether  it  was  true  that  he 
planned  to  go  to  Saloniki  to  place  himself  at  the 
head  of  the  movement  he  was  organizing  to  split 
the  Kingdom  of  Greece  into  two  hostile  camps. 

"It  would  be  unwise  for  me  to  answer  you 
339 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

now,"  he  said.  "I  must  wait  a  brief  time  yet  to 
see  what  the  Government  purposes  to  do,  before 
deciding  what  course  it  would  be  best  to  take  in 
the  event  Greece  does  not  enter  the  war.  As  I 
said  on  August  27,  if  the  King  will  n^t  hear  the 
voice  of  the  people,  we  must  ourselves  decide 
what  it  is  best  to  do.  I  do  not  know  what  it  will 
be,  but  a  long  continuation  of  the  present  situa- 
tion is  intolerable."  He  very  frankly  voiced  a 
fear  that  the  Serbs  might,  after  the  war,  retain 
a  part  of  Greek  IMacedonia,  and  that  the  Allies 
might  hold  Saloniki;  and  he  expressed  the  opinion 
that  it  was  necessary  to  take  some  drastic  action 
to  forestall  these  two  possibilities. 

Wliile  the  Cretan  was  thus  giving  voice  to 
sentiments  scarcely  flattering  to  the  Allies,  King 
Constantine  personally  attended  the  swearing  in 
of  the  1915  recruits  to  the  garrison  of  Athens. 
As  he  had  done  to  the  officers  of  the  11th  Di- 
vision, he  made  a  brief  speech  on  discipline : 

When  a  soldier  does  whatever  he  pleases  and  thinks 
he  knows  best  what  is  good  for  his  country,  then  woe 
betide  such  an  army,  and  the  country  having  such  an 
army.  People  will  tell  you  otherwise  to  mislead  you ; 
but  you  must  not  believe  them,  for  they  are  merely 
exploiting  patriotism  for  their  own  ends ;  they  are  traf- 

340 


VENIZELOS  DECLARES  REVOLUTION 

fickers  of  their  Fatherland:  they  seek  to  commit  grave 
offenses  under  the  cloak  of  patriotism. 

Here  in  a  few  words  is  the  distinction  between 
Venizelos  and  his  sovereign. 

Xot   only   the   king,   but   every   one   else    in 
Greece  agreed  with  Venizelos  that  a  long  con- 
tinuance of  the  anomalous  situation  created  by 
the  refusal  of  the  Entente  ministers  to  recognize 
the  Caloguyeropoulos  government  was  intoler- 
able.    On   September  21,   Nicholas  Politis,   an 
ardent   Ententist   and   supporter   of   Venizelos, 
and  then  under-secretary  of  foreign  affairs,  went 
to  Sir  Francis  Elliot  and  assured  him  informally 
that  the  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet  was  honestly 
doing  all  in  its  power  to  bring  Greece  lo  the  side 
of  the   Entente   in  the  war,   and   sounded  the 
British  minister  as  to  what  changes  in  the  cabinet 
would  render  its  composition  acceptable  to  Great 
Britain  and  France.     I,  myself,  at  King  Con- 
stant ine's  suggestion,  endeavored  to  secure  from 
Sir  Francis  some  statement  of  why  his  govern- 
ment persisted  in  its  strange  policy  of  boj^cotting 
a  minstiy  pledged  to  carry  out  the  very  desire  of 
all  the  Allies. 

"I  am  authorized  to  give  no  assurances  about 
341 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

our  attitude,"  Sir  Francis  replied.  "I  am  wait- 
ing for  instructions."  Both  the  British  and 
French  ministers  realized  fully  the  Greek  sover- 
eign's problem  in  handling  the  Boule,  and  the 
necessity  which  had  prompted  the  inclusion  in 
the  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet  of  three  ministers 
opposed  to  war ;  but  neither  was  disposed  to  assist 
the  king  by  counseling  the  governments  of 
Great  Britain  and  France  either  to  recognize 
the  cabinet  as  it  stood  or  to  indicate  by  what 
changes  of  personnel  the  cabinet  could  be  made 
acceptable  to  the  Allies.  Ex-Minister  of  Marine 
Nicholas  Stratos  at  this  time  was  enthusiastically 
fighting,  in  •  the  Athenian  press,  a  battle  for 
Greek  intervention.  A  man  of  admitted  ability, 
he  was  plainly  indicated  as  a  cabinet  minister  to 
replace  one  of  those  to  whom  the  Entente  ob- 
jected. Sir  Francis  Elliot  vetoed  any  sugges- 
tion of  Stratos  being  used  as  a  cabinet  minister. 

"The  king  is  not  bargaining  Greece's  entry 
into  the  war,"  Stratos  declared  to  me  on  Septem- 
ber 22.  "He  is  merely  being  sensible  enough 
not  to  enter  until  Greece  is  in  a  position  to  be  of 
real  value  to  the  Allies.  We  have  made  our 
proposition  to  the  Entente  powers,  in  which  we 

342 


VENIZELOS  DECLARES  REVOLUTION 

state  what  we  require  in  the  way  of  equipment, 
unless  we  would  be  of  more  trouble  than  as- 
sistance.    The  decision  is  up  to  them." 

What  took  place  in  Rome  at  this  time,  a  diplo- 
matic history  of  the  war  alone  will  reveal.  The 
impression  in  Athens  was  that  Italy  was  at  work 
against  the  acceptance  of  King  Constantine's  co- 
operation with  the  AlHes.  On  September  23  the 
Venizelist  newspaper,  "Hestia,"  commonly  in- 
spired from  the  British  legation,  frankly  stated 
that  rather  than  see  Greece  in  the  war,  Italy,  her- 
self, would  furnish  a  contingent  of  troops  for 
Balkan  use  equivalent  to  whatever  Greece  could 
offer.  It  is  not  improbable,  however,  that  the 
tergiversation  of  the  Allied  govermnents  in  re- 
spect to  the  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet  was  merely 
to  enable  the  agents  of  Venizelos  to  complete 
their  preparations  for  revolution.  Certainly 
revolution  was  not  long  delayed.  Foreign 
Minister  Carapanos's  note,  proposing  the  mili- 
tary operation  of  Greece  with  the  Allies,  still 
remained  unanswered  on  the  desks  of  the  foreign 
ministers  of  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Russia, 
when,  under  the  auspices  of  the  British  fleet,  a 
revolt  broke  out  in  Crete. 

343 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

On  September  24  a  crisis  was  reached.  King 
Constantine  decided  to  alter  the  entire  cabinet  to 
please  the  Entente,  making  Admiral  Coundou- 
riotis,  a  devoted  Venizelist  and  an  uncompromis- 
ing Ententist,  prime  minister.  To  this  end  he 
summoned  Admiral  Coundouriotis  to  the  palace 
for  the  morning  of  September  25.  I  saw  the 
admiral,  myself,  the  evening  before,  and  talked 
with  him  of  his  approaching  interview  with  the 
king.  He,  as  well  as  Sir  Francis  Elliot,  was 
aware  of  the  king's  intentions.  That  evening, 
also,  I  had  a  long  talk  with  King  Constantine, 
who  told  me  that  he  believed  he  had  got  at  the 
bottom  of  the  Entente's  hesitation  to  accept 
Greece  as  an  ally,  and  that  he  was  very  certain 
of  a  favorable  reply  to  his  proposal  within  a  few 
days.  It  seemed  virtually  impossible  that  any- 
thing could  now  prevent  an  agreement  between 
Greece  and  the  Allies.  Probably  only  one  thing 
could  have  prevented  it — and  that  thing  hap- 
pened in  the  small  hours  of  September  25. 

Accompanied  by  a  guard  of  the  Anglo-French 
secret  police,  and  convoyed  by  a  French  de- 
stroyer, Venizelos,  Admiral  Coundouriotis  and 
a  dozen  or  more  followers  of  the  Cretan  left 

344 


VENIZELOS  DECLARES  REVOLUTION 

Athens  secretly  for  Crete  to  take  part  in  the 
revolution  against  the  constitutional  government 
of  Greece.  I  am  certain  that  when  I  talked  with 
Admiral  Coundouriotis  the  previous  evening,  he 
had  no  knowledge  of  this  plot.  The  adventure 
seems  to  have  been  undertaken  on  a  moment's 
notice,  inspired  by  information  that  the  king's 
plan  of  united  action  with  the  Allies  was  on  the 
eve  of  success,  and  by  the  knowledge  that  with  its 
success  Venizelos's  ambitions  and  the  hopes  of  his 
followers  were  permanently  jeopardized.  From 
Canea  he  issued  a  proclamation  which  was  merely 
a  somewhat  more  hysterical  repetition  of  his  cry 
that  King  Constantine  "adopt  his  policy"  and 
join  the  Entente.  At  the  same  time  he  called  for 
volunteers  to  rally  to  him  to  fight  the  Bulgarians. 
In  reply,  Premier  Caloguyeropoulos  declared  to 
me:  "The  sole  question  at  issue  is  whether  the 
Entente  desires  the  cooperation  of  Greece  with 
the  king  and  the  army,  or  whether  they  will  only 
accept  Greece  on  condition  that  Venizelos  head 
the  State."  Former  Greek  Minister  to  the 
United  States,  Deputy  Agamemnon  Schlieman 
put  it:  "It  is  a  choice  between  Greece  as 
Greece,  with  our  sovereign,  our  flag,  and   the 

345 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Greek  national  spirit,  or  merely  individual 
Greeks,  representing  no  really  national  purpose, 
fighting  under  Venizelos  at  so  much  a  day." 

Venizelos  knew  as  well  as  any  one  (indeed 
better)  the  efforts  which  had  been  made  to  com- 
pass the  end  which  in  his  proclamation  he  coun- 
seled his  sovereign  to  achieve.  He  could  not 
have  been  ignorant  that  the  step  he  had  taken 
in  inspiring  insurrection  among  the  inhabitants 
of  new  Greece  would  serve,  more  than  anything 
else,  to  render  impossible  an  effective  coopera- 
tion between  Greece  and  the  Allies.  Yet,  such 
is  the  character  of  the  man,  that  while  clamoring 
for  action  which  others  were  quietly  working  to 
bring  about,  he  was  by  his  own  course  making  it 
impossible. 


346 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE   ENTENTE  REFUSES   GREECE  AS   AN   ALLY 

The  departure  of  Venizelos  changed  nothing 
in  King  Constantine's  purpose  to  join  the  AlHes; 
but  it  altered  materially  the  attitude  of  the  Allied 
powers  toward  Greece.  They  had  never  really 
wished  to  work  with  the  King  of  the  Hellenes, 
because  Constantine  I  was  devoted  heart  and  soul 
to  the  interests  of  his  own  country,  not  to  the 
interests  of  the  Entente.  Venizelos,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  literally  their  man,  wholly  amenable 
to  the  desires  of  Great  Britain  and  France.  In 
his  desperate  effort  to  persuade  the  Entente  not 
to  treat  with  King  Constantine,  Venizelos  un- 
questionably made  promises  which  he  must  have 
known  were  far  in  excess  of  his  ability  to  perform. 
Undoubtedly  also  he  expected  by  his  vast  claims 
to  induce  both  Great  Britain  and  France  to  fi- 
nance his  revolution  on  a  very  large  scale.  In 
this  at  least  he  was  successful.  It  was  probable 
also  that  Great  Britain  and  France  were  thor- 

347 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

oughly  taken  in  by  the  confidence  with  which  the 
Cretan  spoke  of  the  success  of  his  movement  and, 
preferring  to  secure  without  condition  the  co- 
operation of  part  of  the  Greek  army  through 
Venizelos,  rather  than  secure  the  entire  army  by 
accepting  King  Constantine's  terms,  the  Entente 
dehberately  chose  to  foster  the  revolution  in 
Greece. 

In  one  of  his  speeches  Venizelos  spoke  of  ob- 
taining for  General  Sarrail  an  army  of  one  hun- 
di'ed  thousand  men,  presumably  by  stimulating 
desertions  from  the  regular  army.  For  this  pur- 
pose money  was  necessary,  and  money  was  given 
him.  A  soldier  in  the  Greek  army  receives  one 
cent  a  day  when  on  active  service;  Venizelos  of- 
fered five  times  as  much,  together  with  a  cash 
bonus  of  $5,  paid  to  the  soldier  on  his  joining  the 
Venizelist  movement,  as  well  as  the  necessary 
travel  expenses  to  Saloniki.  A  sergeant  in  the 
Greek  army  is  paid  seven  cents  a  day ;  with  Veni- 
zelos he  received  50  cents,  and  a  much  greater  pos- 
sibihty  of  rapid  promotion  was  held  out  to  him. 
A  second  heutenant  in  the  Greek  army  receives 
$6;  with  Venizelos  his  pay  was  $15.50.  A  first 
lieutenant  jumped  from  $7.50  to  $17.50  by  join- 

348 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

ing  the  Venizelists ;  a  captain  from  $8  to  $22.50, 
with  a  bonus,  in  the  case  of  higher  officers,  any- 
where from  $20  to  $100— sometimes  more.  In 
this  "recruiting"  work  the  Anglo-French  secret 
pohce  were  exceedingly  active,  and  the  British 
and  French  legations  brought  pressure  to  bear 
upon  the  Greek  Government  to  prevent  the  ex- 
action of  any  penalty  upon  those  thus  induced  to 
desert  their  country's  flag. 

The  military  organization  of  Greece  naturally 
took  steps  to  prevent  desertions  from  the  Greek 
army;  but  it  is  only  just  to  the  Greeks  to  say 
that  such  desertions  were  comparatively  few.  In 
six  months'  time,  despite  these  inducements  to 
join  Venizelos's  forces,  the  Cretan  had  obtained 
less  than  12,000  men  out  of  the  Greek  army  of 
250,000;  less  than  200  officers  out  of  3500  then 
upon  active  service  in  the  Greek  army,  and  about 
one  hundred  policemen  whom  he  enrolled  as  offi- 
cers of  his  contingent.^ 

The  Cretan's  manoeuver  at  first  was  to  declare 
that  his  movement  had  no  revolutionary  char- 
acter. But  on  his  arrival  in  Saloniki  he  threw 
off  this  mask  and  in  a  public  address  referred 

1  See  Appendix. 

349 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  the  constitutional  government  of  Greece  as 
a  "demented  monarchy  allied  with  political  cor- 
ruption." The  effect  of  this  and  similar  declara- 
tions was  to  alienate  still  more  of  his  followers 
among  the  thinking  people  of  Greece.  His  ad- 
herents in  Saloniki  were,  with  scarcely  an  excep- 
tion, recipients  of  salaries  as  officers  of  the  "pro- 
visional government"  occupying  posts  the  duties 
of  which  were  nominal.  In  Athens  the  much- 
heralded  Balkan  offensive  was  referred  to  as  the 
"offensive  against  the  ten  million  drachmee" — 
that  sum  being  the  first  loan  made  to  the  Venize- 
list  government  by  the  Entente.  The  prime 
minister  of  constitutional  Greece  receives  $160 
a  month.  Venizelos  and  his  coadjutors,  Admiral 
Coundouriotis  and  General  Danghs,  drew  sal- 
aries of  $2400  a  month. 

The  British  and  French  ministers  in  Athens 
quietly  made  clear  to  King  Constantine  what 
would  be  their  attitude  toward  the  constitutional 
government  of  Greece,  now  that  they  hoped  to 
secure  what  they  desired  of  Greece  through 
Venizelos.  The  very  day  of  the  Cretan's  depar- 
ture from  Athens,  it  was  informally  conveyed  to 
King  Constantine  that  the  Entente  expected  of 

350 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

him  a  declaration  in  principle  of  his  readiness  to 
leave  neutrality  without  conditions,  and  the 
formation  of  a  national  ministry  in  which  the 
Venizelists  should  be  largely  represented;  in  de- 
fault of  this,  they  implied  that  an  Allied  control 
of  the  Greek  customs  and  the  confiscation  of  the 
funds  belonging  to  the  Greek  Government,  then 
on  deposit  in  the  banks  of  France  and  England, 
might  be  added  to  the  Allied  control  of  the  Greek 
telegraphs,  telephones,  posts,  wireless,  railways, 
and  police,  which  they  were  abeady  exercising. 

To  ascertain  how  much  cooperation  Venizelos 
would  give  a  national  cabinet  formed  for  war, 
King  Constantine  caused  the  Cretan  to  be 
sounded  while  he  was  yet  in  Crete.  Three  ques- 
tions were  asked: 

(1)  Does  Venizelos  insist  upon  the  premier- 
ship? (2)  Will  he  support  a  war  cabinet?  (3) 
Will  he  or  some  of  his  followers  accept  a  minority 
representation  in  such  a  cabinet,  thus  sharing  the 
responsibility  of  conducting  the  war? 

To  the  first  and  third  questions  Venizelos's  re- 
ply was  negative;  but  he  agreed  to  support  a 
war  cabinet. 

This  was  far  from  satisfactory  to  the  king. 
351 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Venizelos  and  his  followers,  if  they  remained  aloof 
from  the  conduct  of  the  war,  would  be  in  posi- 
tion to  visit  upon  the  conservative  party  the  en- 
tire blame  should  disaster  follow  the  Greek  entry 
into  hostilities.     Having  remained  outside  the 
conduct  of  the  campaign,  they  would  be  free  to 
criticize  everything  which  might  be  done.     On 
the  whole,  the  king  felt  that  as  long  as  Venizelos 
refused  to  return  to  Athens  and  take  up  his 
place  in  the  life  of  the  state  as  a  citizen,  the  leader 
of  a  political  party  accepting  the  full  responsi- 
bility of  such  leadership,  the  Cretan  would  re- 
main a  menace  of  revolution  at  any  moment,  a 
source  of  essential  weakness  to  a  nation  at  war 
which  it  would  be  the  height  of  risk  to  tolerate 
in  a  national  crisis.     He  knew  his  former  first 
minister  too  well  to  dream  for  a  moment  that, 
given  an  opportunity  by  some  reverse  to  the  na- 
tional arms  to  effect  a  coup  d'etat  and  seize  the 
supreme  power,  the  Cretan  would  be  deterred  by 
any  considerations  of  patriotism.     He  believed 
that  a  man  who  would  deliberately,  as  a  political 
manoeuver,  set  about  splitting  the  country  into 
two  hostile  camps  on  the  eve  of  its  entrance  into 
a  life-and-death  struggle,  was  capable  of  any 

352 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

course  for  the  furtherance  of  his  own  ambitions. 

At  the  same  time  the  Greek  monarch  was 
causing  Venizelos  to  be  sounded,  he  conferred 
with  every  man  of  mihtary  and  pohtical  impor- 
tance in  Greece  on  the  same  subject.  The  advice 
given  was  summed  up  by  General  JNloscopoulos, 
chief  of  staff,  in  a  report  favoring  an  early  de- 
parture from  neutrality.  I  attended  a  cabinet 
meeting  on  Sei^tember  27,  which  was  held  solely 
with  this  in  view.  On  receipt  of  these  substantia- 
tions of  his  own  judgment,  King  Constantine, 
relying  on  the  assurances  he  had  already  had,  both 
from  his  brothers  in  Petrograd  and  London  and 
from  the  Greek  minister  in  Paris  just  before 
Venizelos's  departure,  of  the  favorable  reception 
given  his  proposal  to  join  the  Allies,  definitely 
decided  to  discount  the  formal  acceptance  of  his 
offer  of  military  cooperation,  and  to  set  about 
making  preparations  to  that  end  at  once. 

As  a  first  essential  step,  he  charged  Nicholas 
Stratos  to  handle  the  Boule  for  war.  But  Sir 
Francis  Elliot  promptly  nullified  this  disposition 
as  much  as  possible  by  refusing  to  countenance 
Stratos  as  war  minister,  the  post  to  which  he  was 
destined  in  the  war  cabinet  then  under  discus- 

353 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

sion.  As  a  military  measure,  the  king  likewise 
called  certain  as  yet  untrained  resei'ves  to  the 
colors  to  receive  their  military  instruction;  but 
the  British  and  French  ministers  vetoed  this  also, 
as  a  violation  of  the  ultimatum  of  June  21.  As 
for  the  navy,  in  the  early  hours  of  the  morning  of 
September  27,  certain  Venizelists,  aided  by  the 
Anglo-French  secret  police,  forcibly  seized  the 
Greek  second-class  cruiser  Hydra  and  took  it  to 
join  the  Allied  squadron  anchored  in  Keratsina 
Bay,  thus  greatly  upsetting  the  organization  of 
the  entire  Hellenic  navy. 

Despite  these  rebuffs  in  military,  political,  and 
naval  fields.  King  Constantine  persisted  in  his 
determination  to  form  a  war  cabinet  acceptable 
to  the  Entente,  and  to  leave  neutrality  before 
matters  should  become  worse  with  Rumania. 
To  this  end,  on  September  29,  he  drafted  tele- 
grams which  he  proposed  to  send  to  King  George, 
President  Poincare,  and  Emperor  Nicholas  of 
Russia  on  the  occasion  of  completing  his  alliance 
with  them,  and  called  his  brother  Prince  Andi'ew 
home  from  England  to  take  his  place  with  the 
colors. 

Then  suddenly,  out  of  a  clear  sky,  came  a  tele- 
354 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

ffram  from  the  Greek  minister  in  Paris  reciting 
an  informal  conversation  with  Premier  Briand 
on  the  subject  of  Foreign  ;Minister  Carapanos's 
proposals  of  alliance.  Couched  in  discreet  lan- 
guage, as  personal  advice  and  not  an  official  com- 
munication, the  French  premier's  message  to  the 
Greek  sovereign  was  to  the  effect  that,  owing  to 
the  engagements  already  entered  into  among  the 
Allies,  it  was  impossible  to  negotiate  openly  with 
Greece  for  her  acceptance  as  a  full  ally;  but  that 
if  Kinff  Constantine  were  to  assume  the  entire 
responsibility  of  declaring  war  on  Bulgaria,  Great 
Britain  and  France  would  then  be  in  a  position  to 
insist  to  their  AHies  upon  the  admission  of 
Greece  to  the  combination  on  an  equitable  foot- 
ing. Nothing  was  guaranteed;  nothing  even 
promised.  Vague  allusions  to  Greece's  "legiti- 
mate aspirations"  were  calculated  to  dazzle  but 
not  convince.  France  and  Great  Britain  were 
ready  to  declare  their  intention  to  assist  Greece 
in  the  peace  conference  to  push  her  claims  to  ter- 
ritorial expansion — but  no  more.  There  was  not 
one  word  about  the  condition  which  the  Greek 
monarch  had  laid  down  as  essential  to  any  dis- 
cussion, namely,  a  guarantee  of  the  integrity  of 

355 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Greece.  Premier  Briand  further  explained  that 
he  had  delayed  a  formal  reply  to  the  proposals  of 
the  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet  in  the  hope  that 
King  Constantine  would  himself  take  the  initia- 
tive and,  by  declaring  war  on  Bulgaria  without 
any  arrangement  with  the  Entente,  place  the 
Allies  in  the  presence  of  a  fait  accompli.  He 
stated  that  he  still  hoped  the  Greek  sovereign 
would  decide  to  do  this;  but  that  in  any  case  a 
formal  reply  to  the  proposals  of  the  Caloguy- 
eropoulos  cabinet  would  be  forthcoming  in  due 
season. 

It  is  impossible  that  Premier  Briand  could  have 
been  so  ignorant  of  the  character  of  King  Con- 
stantine as  to  suppose  for  a  moment  that  such 
subtleties  as  he  suggested  would  appeal  to  the 
soldier  sovereign.  Direct  and  plain  spoken  to  a 
fault  himself,  Constantine  I  is  not  the  man  to 
play  the  role  in  any  such  evident  intrigue  among 
the  Allies  as  that  the  French  statesman  cast  him 
for.  He  had  made  a  straightforward  proposal; 
he  expected  a  straightforward  answer.  The  rev- 
elation of  lack  of  team  work  among  the  Allied 
powers  which  he  obtained  instead  might  have 
served  a  man  less  personally  frank  as  a  warning 

356 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

that  he  was  not  being  fairly  dealt  with;  Constan- 
tine  of  Greece  merely  dismissed  the  whole  Briand 
proposal  as  childish.  Viewing  the  situation  with 
military  eyes  he  said  simply :  "Why  should  I  de- 
clare war  until  I  am  ready  to  make  war?  Let 
them  help  us  to  get  ready  for  war,  and  I  shall 
declare  war  when  we  are  prepared  to  push  it 
through.  To  make  a  futile  gesture  of  hostility 
without  following  it  up  with  appropriate  action 
is  ridiculous.  Certainly  the  Allies  are  not  going 
to  make  any  such  reply  as  this  to  our  formal  pro- 
posals. We  have,  therefore,  merely  to  get  our 
house  in  order  and  to  wait  their  official  reply." 

In  this  view  of  the  attitude  of  the  Allies,  rea- 
sonable as  it  might  appear,  the  Greek  monarch 
was  not  sustained  by  the  more  astute  politicians 
of  Greece.  A  high-placed  permanent  official,  a 
strong  partizan  of  Greek  cooperation  with  the 
Entente,  summed  up  the  policy  of  Great  Britain 
and  France  in  far  other  terms : 

The  continuous  series  of  attacks  on  Greece  in  the 
London  and  Paris  press  have  long  given  evidence  tliat 
the  Entente  Powers  are  not  seriously  treating  witli  us 
for  our  cooperation  in  the  Balkan  battlefield.  Con- 
sider the  facts:  the  day  the  king  advised  the  British 
minister  of  his  intention  to  leave  neutrality,  an  Allied 

357 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

fleet  arrived  at  Salamis  and  the  unauthorized  arrests 
by  the  Anglo-French  secret  police  began.  When  Mr. 
Zaimis  had  almost  completed  negotiations  for  Greece's 
joining  the  Allies,  the  incident  of  the  "attack"  on  the 
French  legation  suddenly  occurred  and  Mr.  Zaimis 
resigned  in  consequence.  Mr.  Dimitricopoulos,  who 
openly  stated  that  he  was  in  favor  of  Greece's  immedi- 
ate departure  from  neutrality  on  the  side  of  the  Allies, 
was  found  by  the  Entente  ministers  inacceptable  as 
premier.  The  first  act  of  Mr.  Caloguyeropoulos  was 
to  declare  categorically  Greece's  acceptance  in  princi- 
ple of  an  entry  into  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies — 
and  at  once  the  Allied  ministers  refused  to  recognize 
his  cabinet.  From  August  29,  when  the  king  ex- 
pressed his  willingness  to  leave  neutrality,  he  has 
acquiesced  in  every  desire  of  the  Entente  Powers.  Yet 
meanwhile  and  while  the  British  and  French  Govern- 
ments have  actually  been  treating  with  the  king  for  his 
cooperation,  the  press  in  both  countries,  subject  to 
censorship  as  it  is,  has  conducted  the  bitterest  kind  of 
campaign  against  the  sincerity  of  the  king's  intentions. 

Venizelos  declared  on  September  20  that  he  would 
take  no  steps  calculated  to  divide  the  country  until  he 
could  see  what  the  Greek  government  proposed  to  do ; 
yet  a  week  after  the  government's  formal  proposals 
were  submitted  to  the  Allied  chancelleries,  he  left,  with 
the  knowledge  and  assistance  of  the  Allied  ministers,  to 
head  the  insurrection  he  had  inaugurated  in  Crete. 

What  is  the  clue  to  this  seeming  double  game  toward 
Greece?  The  explanation  is  obvious.  The  Italians 
and  Russians  have  always  opposed  Greece's  coopera- 
tion in  the  war,  the  former  because  they  want  Greek 
North  Epirus — possibly  Corfu,  also ;  the  latter  because 
they  want  Greek  Thrace,  opposite  Constantinople. 
As  for  Great  Britain  and  France,  their  interest  is  to 
conserve  a  great  Greece  as  a  buffer  to  Russia  as  a 

358 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

Mediterranean  power.  But  they  mistrust  King  Con- 
stantine,  believing  him  pro-German  despite  his  repeated 
assurances  and  definite  acts  to  the  contrary.  They 
therefore  seem  to  have  decided  upon  a  course  of  keep- 
ing Greece  as  great  as  possible,  while  lessening  in  every 
way  the  prestige  of  the  Greek  monarch.  A  dispassion- 
ate observer  would  conclude  that  the  Entente  Powers 
are  working  to  establish  Venizelos — the  imperialist 
advocate  of  a  greater  Greece — in  complete  control  of 
the  country,  rather  than  to  obtain  the  military  co- 
operation of  Greece  in  the  war. 

It  will  only  be  upon  the  failure  of  the  Venizelist 
movement — which  now  seems  inevitable — that  the  Allies 
will  accept  Greece  to  their  number,  with  King  Constan- 
tine  to  head  the  Greek  armies.  It  is  not  we  who  are 
delaying  Greece's  entry  into  the  war,  but  the  Entente 
Powers  themselves. 

At  the  same  time  that  M.  Briand's  message 
reached  King  Constantine,  the  British  naval  au- 
thorities quietly,  without  declaring  a  blockade, 
set  about  stopping  and  retaining  at  Gibraltar 
or  Malta  all  foodstuffs  or  coal  vessels  bound  for 
Greece.  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  also,  on 
this  occasion,  gave  birth  to  the  first  of  a  large 
family  of  notes  addressed  to  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment in  whicli  simply  as  "commanding  the  Allied 
forces  of  the  Mediterranean,"  he  demanded  the 
expulsion  within  five  days  of  a  number  of  per- 
sons, including  Greek  su])jects,  a  list  of  whom 
he  appended  to  his  note. 

359 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Just  what  other  authority  than  the  guns  of  his 
battleships  the  admiral  of  a  friendly  fleet  might 
have  for  issuing  orders  to  a  sovereign  govern- 
ment did  not  appear  in  the  note,  nor  did  it 
seem  to  trouble  the  champions  of  the  liberties  of 
small  states.  Before  the  prescribed  delay  had 
expired,  the  Allied  ministers  in  Athens  instructed 
their  control  officers  to  stop  the  sending  of  any 
official  cipher  messages  between  the  Greek  Gov- 
ernment and  its  representatives  abroad,  save  those 
addressed  to  Alhed  countries.  It  was  thus  im- 
possible for  the  Greek  Government  to  communi- 
cate with  its  diplomatic  representative  in  Wash- 
ington, save  with  the  full  knowledge  of  the  Allies 
and  governed  by  their  interested  censorship.  It 
is  a  significant  matter,  this ;  for  much  of  the  mis- 
taken impression  of  events  in  the  near  East  dur- 
ing the  months  which  followed  was  spread  in  the 
United  States  through  a  propaganda  to  which 
the  constitutional  government  of  Greece  had  not 
even  the  physical  means  of  replying.  It  was  evi- 
dent at  once  from  these  various  measures  taken  by 
the  Allied  governments  that  pressure  was  to  be 
put  upon  Greece  to  induce  King  Constantine  to 

360 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

accept  ISl.  Briand's  suggestion  of  making  war  at 
once,  prepared  or  unprepared. 

Nor  was  Venizelos  idle.  From  Crete,  where 
fully  a  third  of  his  countrymen  retired  to  the 
mountains  and  refused  to  recognize  his  revolu- 
tionary authority,  he  proceeded  to  Chios  and 
Lesbos,  in  each  of  which  islands  he  made  speeches 
of  an  increasingly  inflammatory  character,  evok- 
ing shouts  of  "Down  with  the  king!"  from  his  au- 
diences. On  his  arrival  at  Saloniki  he  at  once  set 
about  the  formation  of  a  "provisional  govern- 
ment," consisting  of  himself  and  two  figureheads, 
Admiral  Coundouriotis  and  General  Danglis. 
The  campaign  to  recruit  the  army  of  100,000 
men  he  had  promised  the  Allies  began  immedi- 
ately. At  the  same  time,  he  bent  all  his  energies 
to  secure  for  his  "provisional  government"  official 
recognition  from  the  Entente  powers  and  the 
United  States  and,  more  important  still,  to  ob- 
tain a  large  loan  from  the  Allies,  that  with  money 
in  his  coffers  he  might  hold  his  followers  together. 

To  add  to  the  confusion  of*  the  situation,  early 
in  October,  1910,  while  King  Constantine  still 
awaited  an  official  reply  to  his  government's  of- 

361 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ficial  proposal  of  cooperation  with  the  Entente, 
the  Italians  took  a  hand  in  embroiling  matters  by 
advancing  from  Santa  Quaranta,  on  the  coast 
of  Greek  Epirus  just  opposite  Corfu,  to  Ai'guye- 
rocastro  and  toward  Janina.  This  was  by  no 
means  in  the  direction  of  the  Austrians  and  Bul- 
gars,  but  rather  toward  the  heart  of  old  Greece. 
Plainly  the  Italians,  knowing  the  plans  of  their 
Allies  in  regard  to  the  Venizelist  revolution, 
feared  that  France  and  Great  Britain  might 
promise  the  "provisional  government"  conces- 
sions which  would  upset  Italian  ambitions  in  the 
near  East.  It  is  not  improbable  that  their  sur- 
mise was  correct. 

While  all  these  events,  and  especially  the 
Italian  advance,  disturbed  the  Greeks  greatly, 
none  of  them  in  the  least  affected  the  equanimity 
of  the  Greek  monarch.  Rumania  was  faring 
badly  at  the  hands  of  Generals  von  Mackensen 
and  von  Falkenhayn.  King  Constantine,  al- 
ways the  soldier,  felt  that  as  affairs  in  Rumania 
grew  worse,  the  Allies  would  realize  the  folly  of 
playing  at  internal  politics  in  Greece  on  the 
chance  of  obtaining  an  army  through  Venizelos, 
and  would  accept  his  proposal  to  furnish  them 

362 


ENTENTE  REFUSES  GREECE  AS  AN  ALLY 

an  army  already  trained  and  organized  and  lack- 
ing only  certain  equipment,  which  any  force 
A'enizelos  might  raise  would  lack  still  more. 
With  this  in  view  he  planned  a  general  mobihza- 
tion  for  October  8.  He  changed  none  of  his 
preparations  to  join  the  Allies  on  account  of  M. 
Briand's  suggestion.  On  the  contrary,  through 
Dr.  Streit  he  urged  the  Athenian  press  to  mod- 
eration in  dealing  with  Venizelos,  and  set  about 
the  formation  of  a  cabinet  which  the  Allies  would 
recognize,  and  to  which  the  formal  reply  of  the 
Entente  to  his  proposal  could  be  delivered. 

The  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet  resigned  on 
October  3.  Though  it  failed  of  its  mission  to 
bring  Greece  into  the  war,  it  would  scarcely  be 
fair  to  charge  the  failure  either  to  King  Con- 
stantine  or  to  Prime  ^linister  Caloguyeropoulos. 
The  testimony  of  Nicholas  Politis  on  this  point  is 
precious.  Under  Mr.  Caloguyeropoulos  he  had 
striven  without  avail  to  persuade  Sir  Francis 
Elliot  that  the  Government  was  honestly  in  favor 
of  leaving  neutrahty  on  the  side  of  the  Entente. 
Together  with  another  Ententist  in  the  ministry 
for  foreign  affairs  of  Greece,  Mr.  George  Carad- 
jas,  he  had  done  all  he  could  to  convince  the 

363 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Allied  diplomatists  that  they  were  committing 
the  greatest  political  blunder  of  the  war  in  boy- 
cotting the  Caloguyeropoulos  cabinet.  When 
Sir  Francis  and  M.  Guillemin  remained  obdurate, 
he  finally  gave  up  his  attempt  and  went  to 
Saloniki,  where  he  joined  Venizelos  as  minister 
for  foreign  affairs  of  the  "provisional  govern- 
ment." His  judgment  may  therefore  be  taken 
as  somewhat  more  than  impartial  toward  the 
policy  of  the  Allies.  He  made  the  following 
statement :  ^ 

The  Caloguyeropoulos  ministry  was  in  favor  of  in- 
tervention. The  Hellenic  Government,  led  by  Mr. 
Caloguyeropoulos,  submitted  to  the  Entente  legations 
Greece's  proposals  for  an  immediate  participation  in 
the  war,  and  King  Constantine  approved  this  course  of 
the  Government.  Neither  the  fact  that  Mr.  Calo- 
guyeropoulos had  been  known  throughout  his  political 
life  as  an  ardent  friend  of  France,  nor  that  he  was 
assisted  in  the  ministry  by  such  Francophiles  as  Mr. 
Carapanos  and  others,  moved  the  Entente  to  change 
their  views  about  his  cabinet.  Once  having  pronounced 
the  whole  ministry  pro-German,  the  Entente  ministers 
dared  not  admit  their  error. 

1  Elephtheros    Typos    (Venizelist),   November    9,    1916. 


364 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE   SEIZURE   OF   THE   GREEK   FLEET 

After  some  difficulty,  the  distinguished  savant, 
Professor  Spyridon  Lambros,  accepted  the  premi- 
ership and  formed  a  cabinet  which  the  AUied  min- 
isters recognized,  although  they  accompanied  the 
recognition  with  an  admonition  that  the  new  gov- 
ernment was  to  exercise  only  the  nominal  powers 
provided  by  the  ultimatum  of  June  21.  The 
Lambros  government  was  to  be  as  constitution- 
ally unable  to  conduct  war  as  the  Caloguyero- 
poulos  cabinet  had  been.  A  general  mobiliza- 
tion in  compliance  with  Premier  Briand's  sugges- 
tion was,  therefore,  out  of  the  question.  Simul- 
taneously with  their  recognition  of  the  new  cab- 
inet, moreover,  the  British  and  French  ministers 
telegraphed  their  respective  governments  the  ad- 
vice to  reply  to  King  Constantine's  proposal  of 
alliance  in  the  following  sense : 

That  while  the  form  in  which  the  proposal  is  made 
is  not  acceptable,  and  the  question  of  the  Bulgarian 

365 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

occupation  of  Greek  soil  Is  to  be  regarded  as  a  purely 
Greek  matter  In  which  the  Allied  Powers  are  not  con- 
cerned,^ nevertheless,  should  Greece  voluntarily  leave 
neutrality,  declare  war  on  Bulgaria  and  decree  a  gen- 
eral mobilization,  the  Allies  would  be  disposed  to  fur- 
nish every  assistance  to  drive  Greece's  enemy  from  her 
territory,  as  well  as  to  give  other  material  proofs  of 
the  benevolent  interest  of  the  Allies  in  the  welfare  of 
Greece. 

To  this  promising  suggestion,  a  qualifying 
clause  was  added : 

It  Is  understood,  however,  that  these  diplomatic  as- 
surances are  not  in  any  way  to  Interfere  with  the  in- 
structions already  given  the  admiral  of  the  Allied  fleet 
to  assure  by  all  necessary  measures  the  safety  of  the 
Allied  Orient  armies. 

The  vital  question,  therefore,  in  determining 
King  Constantine's  action  was  to  ascertain  pre- 
cisely what  instructions  had  been  given  Admiral 
Dartige  du  Fournet,  and  to  what  extent  they 
might  nullify  "these  diplomatic  assurances." 
But  before  any  revealing  event  could  occur, 
Prince  Andrew  arrived  from  London  and  made 
his  report  upon  opinion  in  Great  Britain  toward 
King  Constantine's  proposal  of  military  coopera- 
tion with  the  Allies.     Exceedingly  plain  spoken, 

1  This  is  rather  astonishing  in  view  of  the  stir  which  had 
been  made  in  London  and  Paris  over  the  Bulgarian  occupation 
of  Fort  Rupel  and  Cavalla. 

366 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

the  king's  brother  minced  no  words.  He  brought 
with  him  a  sheaf  of  cuttings  from  British  news- 
papers, all  assailing  the  Greek  monarch  in  more 
or  less  violent  terms. 

"There's  a  censorship  in  England,"  he  said, 
"and  nothing  is  pubhshed  without  the  consent  of 
the  Government.  Look  at  this  stuff  they  have 
let  be  spread  all  over  the  world,  while  they  had 
your  proposition  under  consideration!  If  they 
are  playing  fair  with  you,  they  have  a  queer  way 
of  showing  it." 

The  King  called  a  crown  council  at  once,  and 
put  everything  before  that  assembly  of  former 
prime  ministers  of  Greece.  He  explained  his 
abiding  intention  to  join  the  Allies  if  he  could 
do  so  on  terms  not  prejudicial  to  the  integrity 
and  reasonable  security  of  his  country;  he  sug- 
gested that  it  would  be  inappropriate  to  discuss 
at  this  time,  and  before  victory,  the  illusory  ter- 
ritorial compensations  to  which  M.  Briand  re- 
ferred in  his  message;  he  reported  his  effort  to 
decree  a  partial  mobilization  a  fortnight  previ- 
iously,  and  the  veto  the  British  and  French  min- 
isters in  Athens  had  put  upon  that  project;  he 
expressed  his  conviction  that,  in  view  of  the  re- 

367 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

verses  in  Rumania,  the  Allies  must  shortly  make 
a  formal  reply  to  his  offer  and,  finally,  he  stated 
that  on  receipt  of  a  favorable  reply,  he  was  ready 
to  execute  his  function  as  head  of  the  Hellenic 
state  by  declaring  war  on  Bulgaria  at  once.  The 
crown  council  approved  this  program  in  full. 

While  this  council  was  sitting,  discussing  thus 
frankly  the  king's  plans  to  join  the  Allies,  a  note 
from  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  was  waiting 
at  the  ministry  for  foreign  affairs  that  was  to 
put  an  end  once  and  for  all  to  any  question  of 
what  the  Admiral's  special  instructions  were  in 
respect  to  Greece.  He  demanded  the  surrender 
to  him  by  the  following  noon,  October  11,  of 
the  entire  Greek  light  flotilla  of  six  torpedo  boats, 
fourteen  destroyers,  the  flagship  of  the  flotilla, 
the  Canaris,  the  protected  cruiser  Helli,  the  two 
Greek  submarines,  and  even  the  unarmed  des- 
patch vessel  Coriolanus,  sole  means  of  communi- 
cation between  the  Piraeus  and  the  Greek  naval 
arsenal  at  Salamis.  The  only  reason  given  for 
the  demand  was  "the  safety  of  the  Allied  fleet.'* 
Of  the  Greek  navy  only  the  two  battleships,  the 
Lemnos  ^  and  the  KilkisJ^  and  the  armored  cruiser 

1  Bx-Mississippi,   U.   S.   N.  2  Ex-Idaho,  U.  S.  N, 

368 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

Georgios  Averojf,  were  to  remain  under  the 
Greek  flag.  Some  1500  Greek  sailors  were  to 
be  set  ashore  on  twehe  hours'  notice,  exiled  from 
the  ships  which  they  had  manned,  in  1912,  to 
victory  over  the  hated  Turk. 

It  is  impossible  to  picture  the  effect  of  this 
demand  upon  the  Greeks  without  reducing  it  to 
terms  of  the  effect  a  similar  demand  by  Great 
Britain,  France,  and  Russia  would  have  upon  the 
jDcople  of  the  United  States.  Indeed,  in  Greece 
the  effect  was  probably  greater,  for  the  Greeks 
are  a  maritime  people,  and  their  gi-eat  pride  was 
their  little  navy.  The  Allied  ministers  in  Athens 
claimed  knowledge  of  a  plot  on  the  part  of  certain 
Greek  naval  officers  to  take  the  Greek  fleet  to 
Constantinople  and  to  deliver  it  over  to  the 
Turks.  There  is  something  altogether  too  fan- 
tastic about  this  story  to  inspire  belief.  The  ex- 
planation commonly  credited  in  Athens  is  more 
reasonable.  The  "recruits"  to  the  Venizelist 
movement  from  the  out  islands  were  not  material- 
izing. With  the  guns  of  the  Greek  fleet  to  per- 
suade the  inhabitants  of  the  islands  to  enlist  in 
his  embryo  army,  as  yet  merely  a  handful  in 
size,  the  Cretan  felt  that  he  could  accomplish 

369 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

something.  Indeed  later,  in  a  public  statement 
given  on  December  30,  1916,  Venizelos  frankly 
confessed  that  only  by  means  of  the  fleet  could 
he  establish  his  control  of  the  islands  he  had 
claimed  were  spontaneous  adherents  of  his  revo- 
lutionary government.^ 

A  second  thing  we  want  of  the  Entente  is  the  Greek 
navy,  which  the  Entente  seized  from  the  royahst  ma- 
rine. A  nationalist  battleship  sailing  among  the  Greek 
islands  and  into  the  ports  of  old  Greece  would  be  more 
effective  in  stamping  out  royalist  sentiment  than  would 
years  of  talk.  We  have  told  the  people  of  the  islands 
that  we  and  the  Entente  are  in  firm  accord;  but  the 
islanders  ask,  "Where  is  the  Greek  fleet?" 

Another  crown  council  was  hastily  called,  and 
discussed  the  Admiral's  demand  until  four  in 
the  morning.  Then  only  did  the  insistence  of 
King  Constantine  that  whatever  the  Allies 
wanted  be  accorded  them,  prevail  against  the  ad- 
vice to  resist.  "It  does  not  matter,"  said  the 
Greek  sovereign  over  and  over  again.  "Soon  we 
shall  all  be  allies  together,  and  our  fleet  will  be 
returned  to  us." 

I  was  aboard  the  flagship  Canaris  the  following 
morning  when  Admiral  Ipitis  had  the  crews 
piped  to  quarters  and  read  the  order  of  the  day 

1  See  Appendix. 

370 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

addressed  to  the  commanders  of  the  Greek  ships 
of  war: 

"Constrained  by  the  mighty  of  the  earth,  in 
grief  we  order  you  to  abandon  your  ships  before 
midday,  accompanied  by  j'our  men." 

When  ^he  order  had  been  read  the  admiral  an- 
nounced that,  by  order  of  King  Constantine,  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  naval  forces  of  Greece, 
every  man  who  wished  to  remain  with  his  ship, 
and  so  to  join  the  Allies,  was  free  to  do  so. 
While  he  was  speaking,  the  men  stood  rigid. 
The  tears  streamed  down  the  faces  of  many.  I 
saw  even  one  Englishman,  a  member  of  the 
British  naval  mission  to  Greece,  who  was  crying 
just  as  were  his  Greek  comrades.  When  the 
admiral  had  finished  his  announcement,  there  was 
a  pause.  Not  a  man  stepped  out  of  line  to  re- 
main with  the  ships  when  they  should  pass  into 
the  hands  of  the  French. 

At  a  signal,  the  blue  and  white  flag  of  Hellas 
was  lowered  on  all  the  ships  and  rolled  up  and 
given  to  the  commander.  The  first  officer  went 
below  and  unscrewed  from  the  wall  the  portrait 
of  King  Constantine  that  hangs  in  the  ward  room 
of  every  vessel  in  the  Greek  navy.     The  chaplain 

371 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

took  down  the  sacred  icon  before  which  in  every 
Greek  ship  burns  the  lamp  of  faith.  At  this 
juncture  a  French  cutter  came  alongside  the  flag- 
ship and  a  French  officer  asked  why  the  Greek 
flag  was  being  lowered.  The  officer  of  the  watch 
replied  shortly,  "The  admiral's  orders."  The 
French  cutter  shoved  off  and  returned  to  its  flag- 
ship, which  stood  by,  cleared  for  action,  and  cov- 
ering the  tiny  Greek  fleet  with  guns  set  for  a 
broadside.  At  the  opposite  end  of  the  little  bay, 
another  Allied  warship  was  anchored,  likewise 
cleared  for  action,  with  her  great  guns  also 
trained  menacingly  on  the  Greek  flotilla. 

An  hour  before  the  time  set  for  delivery,  the 
crews  of  every  vessel  of  those  to  be  surrendered 
took  to  the  boats,  each  commander  the  last  to 
leave  his  ship,  the  flag  rolled  up  under  his  arm. 
They  were  put  ashore  at  Scaramanga,  opposite 
the  arsenal,  where  the  men  gathered  in  silent 
groups  to  watch  the  fate  of  their  ships,  their  sea 
chests  piled  about  them.  On  the  stroke  of  noon, 
the  French  arrived  with  destroyers  and  tugs  and 
took  possession  of  the  deserted  fleet. 

The  French  were  in  bad  temper,  and  exceed- 
ingly neiTous.     Evidently  they  had  expected  one 

312 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

of  two  things — either  that  at  the  command  to 
leave  their  vessels  the  great  majority  of  the  Greek 
sailors  would  remain  on  board  and  join  the  Allied 
squadron,  or  that  some  loyalist  officer  would  seek 
to  destroy  his  vessel  rather  than  give  it  up.  It 
is  a  striking  evidence  of  the  devotion  and  disci- 
pline of  the  Greek  navy  that  neither  happened. 
Twenty-four  hours  before,  eighty  per  cent,  of  the 
Greek  navy  had  been  profoundly  pro-English 
and  eager  to  fight  beside  the  Allies.  The  Greek 
navy  is  British  trained.  During  the  war  with 
Turkey  Admiral  Cardale,  a  British  officer,  had 
served  with  that  very  light  flotilla,  and  most  of 
the  men  had  served  under  him  and  felt  the  great- 
est affection  for  him.  But  their  desire  to  fight 
beside  the  Allies  was  as  free  Greeks,  on  their 
own  ships,  under  their  own  flag,  and  the  com- 
mand of  their  own  king,  not  as  outsiders — volun- 
teers or  insurgents.  This  is  as  true  of  the  army 
as  of  the  navy.  It  is  that  feeling  of  loyalty  to 
Greece  more  than  anything  else  that  the  Allies 
have  never  understood  in  dealing  with  the  Greeks. 
And  that,  more  than  anything  else,  is  why  they 
have  failed  in  all  tlieir  diplomacy  in  Greece. 
The  deserted  ships  were  speedily  towed  out 
373 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

from  their  anchorage  and  moored  where  the  Al- 
lied fleet  surrounded  them.  From  the  shore,  the 
Greek  sailors  in  silence  watched  the  boats  as,  one 
by  one,  they  were  taken  away.  As  the  Canaiis 
was  towed  out,  one  of  them  plucked  the  ribbon 
from  his  hat  and  tore  it  into  shreds.  It  bore  in 
gold  letters  the  name  of  his  ship — Canaris. 

"The  Canaris  is  no  more,"  he  said,  a  quick  sob 
catching  his  voice. 

Aboard  the  Lemnos  I  watched  the  sad  proces- 
sion with  one  of  the  officers  of  the  battleship. 
There  were  tears  on  his  cheeks,  too.  When  the 
last  ship  had  gone,  he  waved  his  arm  at  seven 
huge  Allied  battleships,  at  one  end  of  the  bay, 
and  three  at  the  other.  Any  one  of  these  could 
have  destroyed  the  entire  Greek  flotilla  with  a 
few  shots.  A  swarm  of  Allied  destroyers  com- 
pletely hemmed  in  the  pitiful  little  Greek  fleet  as 
it  had  lain  hugging  the  shore  under  the  shadow 
of  the  arsenal. 

"My  God!"  he  cried  bitterly,  "what  could  we 
ever  have  done  to  them !  Why  do  they  think  they 
have  to  take  away  our  honor,  too !" 

That  evening,  when  the  sailors  of  the  fleet 
reached    Athens,    an    immense    demonstration 

374 


"One  clement  of  possible  conciliation" 
REAR  ADMIRAL  HUBERT  CAUDAI-K.  RUN. 
Acting  Head  of  the  BritiBh  Naval  Mission  in  C.rccco 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

sprang  into  being,  spontaneously.  The  sailors 
were  joined  by  thousands  of  others  and  together 
they  all  marched  through  the  streets  carrying  a 
Hellenic  flag.  Before  a  rifle  range  on  Stadium 
Street  an  American  flag  was  displayed.  They 
plucked  it  from  the  wall  and  placed  it  beside  the 
white  and  blue  of  Greece  and  swept  along  behind 
the  two  colors,  to  the  American  legation.  The 
leaders  of  the  crowd  were  petty  officers  and  plain 
seamen  of  the  Greek  navy,  who  spoke  the  Eng- 
lish they  had  learned  from  their  British  training 
officers.  They  felt  somehow  that  because  two 
of  their  battleships  had  once  been  American,  the 
United  States,  too,  might  have  something  to  say 
about  their  forcible  sequestration  by  warring 
powers.  They  wanted  to  tell  the  American  min- 
ister about  it,  and  beg  his  mediation  with  the 
Allies  to  get  their  ships  back. 

It  was  a  simple,  childish  idea,  and  the  men  who 
conceived  it  were  imbued  with  the  childlike  feel- 
ing that  they  had  been  wronged,  and  that  Amer- 
ica, the  great  champion  of  the  weak,  could  set 
their  wrong  right  again.  But  the  legation  was 
closed.  From  the  Athenian  Club  across  the 
street,  Mr.  Droppers,  the  minister,  watched  the 

377 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

profoundly  moving  demonstration  without  re- 
vealing his  presence,  although  he  admitted  that  it 
was  a  very  orderly  demonstration.  Ultimately, 
the  crowd  went  elsewhere,  discouraged,  but  still 
bearing  the  American  and  Greek  flags  before 
them.  The  following  morning  a  committee 
waited  upon  Mr.  Droppers  and  presented  him 
a  set  of  resolutions,  asking  that  the  President  of 
the  United  States  take  cognizance  of  the  extraor- 
dinary circumstance  that  three  great  powers 
had  combined  by  the  threat  of  force  to  seize  al- 
most the  entire  navy  of  a  small,  neutral  state. 
This  was  but  one  of  the  many  manifestations  of 
the  heartsoreness  of  the  Greeks.  Everywhere  I 
saw  Greek  sailors  whom  I  knew,  and  knew  to 
have  been  passionately  in  favor  of  joining  the 
Allies,  who  had  been  Venizelists,  as  weU;  they 
had  changed.  Not  a  man  of  them  but  was  deeply 
resentful  toward  the  British  and  French,  and  in- 
credibly bitter  toward  Venizelos,  whom  they  held 
responsible  for  deceiving  the  Allies  as  to  the 
intentions  of  the  Greek  navy. 

The  same  day  that  the  Greek  hght  flotilla  was 
seized  by  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet,  the 
Allied  consuls  in  Crete  formally  recognized  the 

378 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

"provisional  government"  in  the  island,  and 
Venizelos  formed  a  "cabinet"  in  Saloniki. 
Twelve  ministerial  portfolios,  with  no  duties  to 
speak  of  attached,  were  confided  to  obscure  poli- 
ticians and  newspaper  editors  who  had  conducted 
the  Venizelist  propaganda.  If  there  were  no 
duties  for  these  "ministers"  to  perform,  there 
were  nevertheless  salaries  to  draw.  Constitu- 
tional Greece  has  but  nine  cabinet  ministers, 
drawing  each  $160  per  month;  the  "provisional 
government"  boasted  twelve  administrators  with 
nothing  to  administrate,  each  drawing  $1600  per 
month  for  the  service — a  difference,  counting  the 
salaries  of  Venizelos  and  his  two  coadjutors,  of 
$300,520  per  annum,  the  price  in  ministerial  sal- 
aries alone  of  the  Saloniki  government,  in  excess 
of  the  cost  of  maintaining  the  government  of 
constitutional  Greece. 

The  following  day  Admiral  Dartige  du  Four- 
net  presented  a  supplementary  note,  requiring 
that  the  guns  of  the  Lemnos,  Kilkis,  and  Georg- 
ios  Aver  off  be  rendered  useless  by  delivering  up 
their  breech-blocks;  and  that  their  crews  be  re- 
duced to  one  third  strength ;  and  that  all  the  bat- 
teries defending  the  Pirseus  be  surrendered  to 

379 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

French  gunners.  He  demanded,  further,  full 
maritnne  and  military  jurisdiction  over  the  port 
of  the  Piraeus  and,  finally,  complete  control  of 
the  police  and  of  the  administration  of  the  Athens- 
Saloniki  railway.  These  demands  were  based 
on  "the  protection  of  the  flanks  of  the  Allied 
Orient  armies  at  Saloniki."  Naturally,  such  an 
excuse  struck  the  Greek  people  as  grotesque. 
To  any  Greek,  or  indeed,  to  any  one  familiar  with 
Greek  history,  the  idea  of  an  army  in  Macedonia 
in  peril  from  the  attack  of  an  inferior  force  from 
Thessaly,  is  ridiculous.  There  are  but  two  passes 
to  the  north :  the  Vale  of  Tempe,  which  could  be 
held  by  a  single  machine  gun  against  an  army 
corps,  and  the  Petras  defile,  over  the  western 
slopes  of  Mt.  Olympus,  through  which  Xerxes 
invaded  Thessaly,  and  which  a  battery  of  field 
artillery  could  readily  defend  against  an  invading 
army. 

It  was  therefore  necessary  to  seek  another  and 
likelier  reason  for  these  latest  requirements  of  the 
admiral  in  command  of  the  Allied  squadron.  It 
appeared  from  the  note  itself  in  the  shape  of  the 
demand  for  the  complete  control  of  the  Greek 
pohce.     Since  Venizelos's  departure,  the  Allied 

380 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

diplomatic  authorities  in  Athens  hail  hecn  in- 
creasingly active  in  stimulating  the  "recruiting 
of  volunteers"  to  the  Venizelist  army.  The 
French  minister  had  even,  on  one  occasion,  fur- 
nished an  armed  guard  of  French  marines  to 
conduct  a  few  cadets  arid  Greek  policemen 
through  the  streets  of  Athens  to  the  Piraeus,  to 
embark  for  Saloniki,  with  the  idea  of  thus  im- 
pressing the  Athenians  with  the  official  sanction 
given  by  the  Allies  to  desertion  from  the  Greek 
service  to  join  Sarrail's  forces.  The  Anglo- 
French  secret  police  conducted  regular  bureaus 
of  "recruitment."  Every  evening  when  the 
streets  of  Athens  were  most  crowded,  an  auto- 
mobile of  the  Anglo-French  secret  police  whirled 
through  Stadium  Street  at  terrific  speed,  bearing 
on  their  way  to  join  Venizelos  a  few  soldiers, 
alread}^  half  drunk  on  the  money  paid  them  to 
risk  their  skins  fighting  for  the  Alhes.  As  the 
same  high  permanent  official  already  quoted  put 
it:  "A  dispassionate  observer  would  conclude 
that  the  Entente  powers  are  bending  every  en- 
ergy to  establish  Venizelos  in  complete  control  of 
Greece,  not  to  secure  the  militaiy  cooperation  of 
Greece  in  the  war."     It  was  precisely  this  inter- 

381 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

pretation  which  the  people  of  Athens  put  upon 
the  French  admh'al's  latest  demands. 

King  Constantine  was  anxious  to  avoid  any 
untoward  incident  which  might  give  rise  to  fur- 
ther oj^pressive  measures  of  control.  He  there- 
fore turned  the  disj)ossessed  sailors  of  the  fleet 
into  soldiers,  and  set  them  to  policing  Athens 
and  the  Piraeus.  To  crystallize  the  spirit  of  dis- 
cipline and  esprit  de  corps  among  the  sailors  in 
this  new  function,  he  reviewed  them  in  person  on 
October  16. 

Tens  of  thousands  of  men,  women,  and  children 
gathered  in  the  Champs  de  Mars  to  witness  the 
ceremony.  Admiral  Damianos,  minister  of  ma- 
rine, read  a  royal  order  of  the  day  addressed  to 
"officers,  pett}^  officers,  and  sailors,"  and  con- 
ceived in  the  exalted  style  of  Greek  public  ad- 
dresses : 

In  these  days  there  is  bitterness  still  upon  your  lips ; 
each  hour  new  wounds  drain  all  hearts — those  hearts 
that  in  pride  saw  of  old  but  one  Greece,  honored  and 
victorious.  In  these  days  my  government  has  been 
constrained  to  order  you  to  quit  those  ships  aboard 
which  you  brought  liberty  to  our  enslaved  brothers. 

You  have  come  here  with  souls  bleeding  and  with 
tears  in  your  eyes,  but  without  one  single  defection 
from  your  ranks,  to  take  your  place  beside  your  king. 
I  thank  you  and  I  congratulate  you,  my  faithful  sailors 

S82 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

■ — not  as  king  and  commander-in-chief  of  the  navy,  but 
in  the  name  of  the  Fatherland  which  you  adore,  and  for 
which  you  have  given  so  much  in  sacrifice. 

I  pray  that  our  dearest  vow  may  speedily  be  ful- 
filled, and  that  the  blessed  hour  may  be  at  hand  when 
3'ou  shall  again  take  aboard  your  ships  the  sacred 
icons,  that  have  watched  over  you  in  the  past  and  that 
shall  watch  over  you  in  the  future,  and  the  glorious 
flags,  that  they  may  once  more  float  to  the  breeze  of 
Hellenic  seas  and  bring  consolation  and  hope  to  every 
Hellenic  heart,  for  king  and  country. 

It  seems  difficult  to  believe  that  this  oratorical 
flight,  so  Greek  in  its  character,  was  hailed  in 
France  and  England  as  proof  positive  of  King 
Constantine's  hostility  to  the  Entente  and  his 
scarcely  concealed  efforts  to  incite  his  people  to 
attack  the  Allies!  Certainly  the  Greeks  assem- 
bled in  the  Champs  de  JMars  did  not  think  so. 
To  them,  it  was  a  mere  call  upon  their  loyalty, 
and  they  responded  as  one  man.  Scarcely  had 
the  review  of  the  sailors  ended  when  King  Con- 
stantine,  on  horseback,  rode  unaccompanied  into 
the  crowd  surrounding  the  great  military  exer- 
cise field.  Neither  aide  nor  orderly  rode  with 
him.  Not  a  plain-clothes  man  was  anywhere 
near.  With  a  single  gesture,  he  commanded  his 
entourage  to  remain  where  they  were,  and  gave 
himself  up  to  his  people. 

383 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

They  greeted  him  as  one  of  themselves,  but 
with  a  certain  reverence,  too.  They  pressed 
about  him,  striving  to  touch  his  person  with  eager 
hands — to  touch  his  saddle  or  even  the  horse  that 
bore  him.  They  clung  to  his  stirrup  and  let 
themselves  be  dragged  along  as  he  rode  slowly 
back  and  forth  through  the  crowd.  Now  and 
then  he  spied  a  soldier  whom  he  had  known  at 
Saloniki  or  Janina,  and  called  him  by  name,  ask- 
ing after  the  wife  and  babies;  now  and  then  he 
sharply  commanded  the  pressing  multitude  to 
give  way  to  let  through  some  mother  with  a  child 
in  arms  or  some  old  woman,  whose  shoulder  he 
bent  down  to  pat  affectionately. 

"The  koumharos!  the  koiimharosl"  was  the  cry 
in  every  mouth.     "Long  live  the  koumharosr 

Not  since  Napoleon's  time  has  any  ruler  in  the 
world  gone  so  freely  and  so  blithely  among  his 
people  as  Constantine  I  on  that  day.  The  crowd 
was  full  of  men  who  had  been  Venizehsts — would 
again  be  Venizelists,  if  Venizelos  should  succeed ; 
and  Venizelos  himself,  their  leader,  was  now  ar- 
rayed in  revolution  against  the  man  who  rode 
among  them.  Months  of  the  bitterest  denuncia- 
tion from  press  and  platform  had  fired  hatreds 

384j 


THE  SEIZURE  OF  THE  GREEK  FLEET 

in  the  breasts  of  these  quick-hating  people  that 
might  easily  have  found  expression  in  the  stroke 
of  a  dagger  or  a  pistol  shot.  Not  a  hand  was 
raised  save  in  blessing.  And  the  man  who  had 
dared  to  shout  "Down  with  the  king!"  at  that 
moment  would  have  been  literally  torn  to  pieces 
by  the  crowd. 

That  is  what  the  Greek  people  think  of  their 
sovereign ! 

Princess  Alice  of  Battenberg  summed  up  the 
Greek  attitude  toward  King  Constantine  in  a 
few  words: 

He  is  a  brave  and  inspired  soldier,  who  has  led  the 
Greek  people  to  victory ;  and  they  adore  him  for  it. 
Even  those  who  to-day  are  in  insurrection  against  the 
crown,  will  return  to  loj'al  allegiance  the  moment  the 
foreign  influence  is  lifted  from  them.  The  people  of 
Greece  almost  worship  their  king,  and  the  great  mis- 
take our  people^  have  made  has  been  to  assume  the 
contrary  and  to  protect  and  foster  a  revolution  against 
him.  Had  they  spent  a  quarter  of  the  time  and  good- 
will seeking  to  come  to  an  understanding  with  him  that 
they  have  spent. in  helping  to  build  up  a  revolutionary 
movement  directed  against  him,  none  of  the  sad  events 
of  the  last  few  months  would  have  occurred,  and  he  and 
they  long  since  would  have  been  working  in  perfect 
harmony. 

1  The  English.     Princess  Alice  is  an  Englishwoman. 

385 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE   VENIZELIST   INVASION    OF    OLD    GREECE 

On  October  13,  I  had  had  a  long  talk  with 
King  Constantine.  He  was  fully  cognizant  of 
the  blow  the  French  admiral's  seizure  of  the 
Greek  fleet  had  dealt  his  hopes  of  an  arrange- 
ment with  the  Allies,  and  by  no  means  ignorant 
of  their  preference  for  dealing  with  Venizelos 
rather  than  with  the  constitutional  government 
of  Greece.  He  asked  me  frankly,  with  that  di- 
rectness so  characteristic  of  him,  what  was  wrong. 
I  answered  him  as  frankly. 

"They  do  not  trust  you,  Sire,"  I  said.  "They 
say  that  they  are  afraid  that  your  armies  will 
attack  Sarrail's  forces  in  the  rear  and  catch  him 
between  the  Greeks  and  the  Bulgarians." 

"They  must  have  lost  their  heads,"  he  rejoined. 
"Any  one  who  knows  the  lay  of  the  land  knows 
that  that  is  militarily  impossible.  However,  do 
you  think  it  would  help  to  dissipate  that  impres- 

386 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREECE 

sion  if  I  offered  to  withdraw  all  my  troops,  in 
excess  of  peace  strength,  from  Thessaly?" 

I  told  him  I  thought  it  would,  and  informed 
Sir  Francis  Elliot  of  the  king's  intention.  On 
the  evening  of  King  Constantine's  revicAv  of  his 
sailors,  however,  the  French  admiral  seized  the 
occasion  to  land  several  platoons  of  marines  with 
machine  guns,  and  march  them  to  Athens.  The 
ostensible  excuse  was  that  the  Greek  monarch's 
address  to  the  dispossessed  crews  of  the  Greek 
warships  was  of  so  inflammator}"  a  nature  as  to 
endanger  the  general  peace,  and  that  the  marines 
were  debarked  to  assist  the  Greek  police  in  main- 
taining order.  It  was  indeed  with  gi-eat  diffi- 
culty that  order  was  maintained  following  this 
landing  of  foreign  troops  upon  neutral  soil,  so 
great  was  the  resentment  of  the  Greeks  against 
a  step  which  they,  not  without  reason  it  must  be 
admitted,  considered  wholly  unnecessary. 

The  landing  force  occupied  first  the  municipal 
theater,  where  a  cordon  of  Greek  marines  blocked 
the  surrounding  streets  to  prevent  any  hostile 
manifestation.  Later,  the  Greek  Government 
offered  them  various  buildings  where  they  could 
be  comfortably  housed.     But  the  French  admiral 

387 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

insisted  upon  quartering  his  men  in  the  Zappeion 
exposition  building,  where  there  was  neither 
water  nor  any  other  provision  for  meeting  the 
needs  of  so  large  a  force.  The  Zappeion  build- 
ing, however,  had  the  advantage  of  being  within 
three  hundred  yards  of  King  Constantine's  pal- 
ace, on  the  opposite  side  from  the  French  lega- 
tion, where  another  contingent  of  French  marines 
was  already  quartered.  The  Greek  sovereign 
was  thus  surrounded  on  two  sides  by  an  armed 
foreign  force. 

The  patrols  of  the  French  marines  through  the 
streets  of  Athens,  far  from  impressing  the  popu- 
lation with  the  might  of  the  Allies,  as  was  evi- 
dently one  of  the  intentions  of  the  landing, 
rendered  both  the  marines  themselves  and  those 
who  had  sent  them  ashore  ridiculous.  For  the 
Greek  Government  was  not  ignorant  that  the 
moving  purpose  of  landing  the  troops  was  prob- 
ably to  provoke  some  sort  of  a  hostile  demon- 
stration which  could  be  seized  upon  by  the  French 
admiral  as  an  occasion  for  taking  charge  of  the 
Greek  capital  in  force.  To  avoid  such  a  con- 
tingency, the  strictest  guard  of  the  streets  of  the 
city   was   kept   by   the    Greeks.     Whenever    a 

388 


VENIZELIST  IXVASIOX  OF  OLD  GREECE 

French  patrol  of  thirty  men  passed  through  the 
streets  on  its  ostensible  mission  of  maintaining 
order,  a  Greek  cavalry  patrol  of  four  times  the 
strength  guarded  it  on  all  sides,  to  prevent  any 
hothead  from  doing  something  to  precipitate  a 
conflict.  It  is  indicative  of  the  point  of  hysteria 
to  which  the  British  and  French  in  Athens  had 
worked  themselves,  that  few  saw  the  humor  of 
a  situation  in  which  the  Greeks  were  compelled 
to  call  out  a  large  military  force  to  guard  the 
guards  set  by  the  French  admiral  to  maintain 
order  in  a  perfectly  calm  city.  The  same  high 
Greek  official  previouslj^  quoted  said  in  regard 
to  this  matter : 

Far  from  promoting  quiet,  the  mere  presence  of  for- 
eign troops  in  Athens  and  the  Piraeus  is  the  greatest 
possible  incentive  to  trouble.  It  is  precisely  as  if  a 
detachment  of  Japanese  n)arines  had  been  landed  in 
New  York  to  assist  the  local  police  at  the  time  of  the 
activities  of  the  gunmen — and  we  feel  just  that  way 
about  it.  What  is  worse,  if  we  concentrate  troops  in 
Athens  to  prevent  trouble,  the  British  and  Frencli 
ministers  will  say  that  we  are  preparing  to  attack 
them ;  if  we  don't  they  will  say  that  we  are  incapable  of 
keeping  order,  .  .  .  With  a  manunoth  foreign  fleet 
threatening  the  Piraeus  and  a  thousand  odd  marines 
quartered  in  our  capital,  it  is  doubtful  if  either  Greece 
or  many  Greeks  can  now  be  induced  to  join  IIr.'  Allies. 

King  Constantine  was  not  of  this  o})ini()n.     lie 
389 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

called  Sir  Francis  Elliot  to  the  palace  to  inform 
him  of  his  intention,  as  a  convincing  proof  of 
good  faith,  to  withdraw  all  the  Greek  troops  over 
peace  strength  from  Thessaly  to  the  Greek  pro\  - 
inces  bordering  on  the  Gulf  of  Corinth,  thus  dis- 
posing of  any  even  chimeric  possibility  of  danger 
to  General  Sarrail's  rear.  No  sooner  had  he 
done  this  than  General  Bousquier,  the  French 
military  attache,  presented  a  formal  demand  on 
the  part  of  France  and  Great  Britain  that  these 
troops  be  withdrawn  from  Thessaly,  not  merely 
to  ^toha,  Lokris,  Phokis,  Attica,  and  Boeotia  as 
the  Greek  monarch  had  proposed,  but  to  the 
Peloponnesus,  where  the  Allied  fleet  could  hold 
them  virtually  imprisoned  on  an  island.  At  the 
same  time,  the  Allied  police  control  officer  in- 
formed the  editors  of  all  save  the  Venizelist  news- 
papers that  the  French  would  thereafter  exercise 
a  censorship  of  the  press,  in  violation  of  the  fun- 
damental law  of  Greece.  Regarding  these 
manceuvers  of  the  Entente,  King  Constantine 
expressed  himself  pointedly. 

"My  brother  realizes  that  it  is  reasonable  that 
Sarrail's  flank  should  be  protected  against  even 
the  vaguest  possibility  of  attack,"  Prince  Andrew 

390 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREFXE 

told  me.  "While  he  has  given  his  word  that  the 
Allied  troops  will  not  be  attacked,  and  while  it 
is  militarily  impossible  for  our  army  to  march 
against  SarraiFs,  still  the  king  has  been  ready 
to  and  has  offered  of  his  own  accord  to  with- 
draw the  bulk  of  his  troops  from  Thessaly,  in 
order  to  set  any  latent  fears  at  rest,  and  as  an 
earnest  of  his  sincerity  in  dealing  with  the  En- 
tente. Instead  of  accepting  this  in  the  frank 
spirit  in  which  it  is  offered,  the  Entente  now 
demand  that  the  king  so  dispose  of  two  army 
corps  as  practically  to  lock  them  up  in  a  concen- 
tration camp. 

"Sir  Francis  seems  to  have  indicated  the  real 
purpose  of  all  this  business  when  he  asked  the  ' 
king  if  it  were  not  possible  to  call  Venizelos  back 
as  prime  minister.  The  king  replied:  'You 
executed  Casement  as  a  traitor  because  he  merely 
tried  to  separate  Ireland  from  England.  Ven- 
izelos has  actually — though  I  believe  only  tem- 
porarily— separated  Crete,  some  of  the  iEgean 
islands  and  part  of  Macedonia  from  the  rest  of 
Greece.  After  all,  Ireland  is  not  England ;  but 
the  inhabitants  of  Crete,  the  /Egean  islands  and 
Macedonia  are  Greeks.     Great  Britain  can  no 

391 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

more  expect  me  to  make  Venizelos  premier  than 
England  could  have  made  Casement  viceroy  of 
Ireland.'  " 

In  substantiation  of  this  impression  that  Great 
Britain  and  France  were  working  solely  to  im- 
pose Venizelos  upon  Greece  as  a  sort  of  dictator 
and  pro-consul  for  the  Alhed  powers  at  whatever 
cost,  came  certain  unquestionable  information 
which  I  received  at  this  juncture  from  a  member 
of  one  of  the  Allied  legations.  He  came  to  me 
of  his  own  accord,  and  spoke  with  complete  can- 
dor. 

"I  think  we  are  blindly  going  from  injustice  to 
worse,"  he  said,  "because  no  one  in  Paris  or  Lon- 
don has  the  courage  to  admit  that  Venizelos  has 
been  a  bad  venture,  and  that  we  should  throw 
him  over  and  reach  an  understanding  with  the 
king.  On  the  contrary,  we  are  going  to  de- 
throne the  king — perhaps  not  at  once,  but  ulti- 
mately. I  know,  and  I  think  the  Government 
knows,  that  the  king  has  been  right  all  along — 
about  the  Dardanelles,  about  Serbia,  Saloniki, 
Rumania,  Venizelos,  and  everything  else.  And 
we  have  been  wrong.  But  we  feel  that  to  admit 
it  now  would  mean  the  fall  of  every  Allied  gov- 

392 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREECE 

ernment,  and  upset  the  whole  conduct  of  the  war. 
We  dare  not  risk  the  effect  of  that  upon  the 
neutrals.  Therefore  King  Constantine  must 
give  way.  It  is  unjust,  if  you  like,  hut  it  is 
going  to  he  done.  You  can  tell  him  so,  if  you 
wish." 

I  did.  At  once  King  Constantine  sent  for 
each  of  the  Entente  ministers  in  turn,  and  once 
again  went  openly  and  loyally  over  the  same 
ground  he  had  akeady  covered  with  generals 
Kitchener,  de  Castelnau,  Sarrail,  ^lahon,  and 
with  M.  Denys  Cochin.  Following  the  first  of 
these  conversations,  the  king  decreed  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  Greek  forces  under  arms  from  60,000 
to  34,000.  The  end  of  Rumania  was  already  in 
sight.  Though  the  dilatory  tactics  of  the  En- 
tente in  treating  with  the  Greek  monarch's  offer 
of  cooperation  had  now  made  such  cooperation 
of  little  practical  value,  King  Constantine  did 
not  withdraw  his  offer,  to  which  as  yet  he 
had  had  no  formal  reply. 

Italian  and  Russian  counsel  prevailed  in  the 
Allied  conference  then  heing  held  at  Boulogne, 
where  the  entire  Balkan  situation  was  threshed 
out.     As  a  result,  tlie  representatives  of  the  iVl- 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

lied  powers  decided  not  to  recognize  the  Venize- 
list  "provisional  government,"  which  an  Italian 
diplomat  described  as  having  been  of  more  em- 
barrassment than  assistance  to  the  Allies.  Even 
M.  Guillemin  spoke  warmly  of  the  "loyal  declar- 
ations by  the  Greek  sovereign  of  his  sentiments 
toward  the  Entente."  Nicholas  Stratos,  the 
leader  of  the  "king's  party"  for  war  in  Greece 
declared:  "Now  that  the  irritations  due  to  the 
mutual  distrust  of  one  another  on  the  part  of 
King  Constantine  and  the  Entente  are  out  of  the 
way,  we  can  go  to  work  negotiating  Greece's  join- 
ing the  Allies  as  a  nation  and  a  people,  not  in  the 
Venizelos  fashion,  as  individuals."  Most  signifi- 
cant of  all,  the  representatives  in  Athens  of 
Austria,  Turkey,  and  Bulgaria  made  definite 
overtures  to  the  United  States  to  take  charge  of 
their  interests  in  Greece  should  Greece  leave 
neutrality.  Once  more  all  seemed  happily  ar- 
ranged, but  those  who  had  followed  events  before 
began  to  question  what  new  action  Venizelos 
would  take  to  prevent  the  final  consummation  of 
an  understanding  between  the  Greek  king  and 
the  Allies. 

They  had  not  long  to  wait.     Scarcely  had  King 
394 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREECE 

Constantine  ended  his  conversations  with  the 
British,  French,  Russian,  and  Itahan  ministers 
and  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet,  when,  on  Oc- 
tober 28,  a  battahon  of  Venizehst  troops  crossed 
the  Alacmon  river  and  marclied  southward  in  an 
attempt  to  effect  a  surprise  attack  upon  Tliessaly. 
At  the  Xiseh  bridge,  a  guard  of  twelve  loyal 
evzones  ^  of  Queen  Sophie's  regiment  stood  off 
600  Venizelists,  many  of  whom  were  also  evzones. 
AAHien  the  attackers  saw  that  those  who  held  the 
bridge  were  of  the  same  corjDs,  they  refused  to 
continue  the  engagement,  and  it  was  onlj^  by 
fording  the  river  at  another  point  and  flanking 
tlie  guards  at  the  bridge  that  the  invasion  was 
successfully  launched  with  a  loss  of  a  number  of 
men  for  the  invaders.  What  might  have  been 
the  opening  gun  of  civil  war  in  Greece  had  been 
fired  by  the  revolutionaries.  It  was  Venizelos's 
retort  to  the  decision  of  the  Boulogne  conference. 
Since  the  "provisional  government"  had  been 
established  in  Saloniki,  by  tacit  consent  the  Alac- 
mon river  had  marked  the  southern  frontier  of 
its  sphere  of  influence.     Xow  this  frontier  had 

'Greek  lijrlit  inf.intry,  wearing  the  fust;in<-Ila  or  skirt,  the 
historic  costume  of  the  Greek  wars  of  indeixndi'ncc.  They  are 
regarded  as  the  must  intrij)id  soldiers  in  tlie  IJaikans. 

395 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

been  crossed.  Already  the  population  of  INIace- 
donia  had  been  treated  with  the  utmost  cruelty 
by  Venizelist  "recruiting"  officers,  seeking  to  fill 
the  ranks  of  his  so-called  "anti-Bulgarian  arm3\" 
The  career  of  one  Lefkis,  a  lieutenant  in  the 
Venizelist  army,  is  an  extraordinary  record  of 
brutalities  committed  in  the  Chalcidic  peninsula. 
Ex-Deputy  Khalkirikis,  of  that  district,  had  left 
his  home  and  taken  to  the  mountains  with  1500 
men,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Turkish  domination, 
to  combat  this  conscription  levied  by  force  of 
Venizelist  arms,  with  the  knowledge  and  con- 
nivance of  the  French  military  authorities.* 
Many  fugitives  from  the  Chalcidic  peninsula  had 
crossed  to  the  mainland  in  small  boats,  with  the 
few  possessions  left  to  them,  and  recounted  the 
horrors  of  the  Venizelist  occupation  of  the  Chal- 
cidic. When,  therefore,  Major  Bartzoukas  and 
his  "anti-Bulgarians"  crossed  the  Alacmon  and 
marched  upon  Ekaterina,  the  civil  population 
fled  before  him  in  terror. 

The  railways  and  telegraphs  of  Greece  were 
in  the  control  of  the  French.  Major  INlitsas,  the 
loyal  officer  commanding  the  tiny  garrison  of 

1  See  Appendix  4. 

396 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREECE 

Ekaterina,  telegraphed  his  headquarters  at 
Larissa  to  request  reinforcements  and  report  that 
the  Venizelist  "anti-Bulgarian"  army  was  prov- 
ing itself  an  anti-Greek  army  and  descending  in 
force  upon  Thessaly.  The  French  control  offi- 
cers in  charge  of  the  Greek  telegraphs  delayed 
his  message  until  the  revolutionists,  a  hattalion 
strong,  were  before  Ekaterina.  The  news,  how- 
ever, ran  through  the  country  like  wildfire  and 
reached  Colonel  Trikoupis,  in  command  at 
Larissa,  almost  as  quickly  as  if  the  French  had 
not  delayed  Major  Mitsas's  despatch.  Nothing 
was  gained  by  the  action  of  the  French  control 
officers,  save  to  reveal  very  clearly  the  Allied 
attitude  toward  the  constitutional  Greek  Gov- 
ernment. 

Colonel  Trikoupis  lost  no  time.  lie  sent  a 
battahon  with  machine  guns  and  mountain  artil- 
lery to  cross  the  shepherds'  paths  over  Blount 
Olympus  and  take  the  revolutionists  in  the  rear. 
At  the  same  time,  he  asked  permission  of  the 
Allied  railway  control  officers  to  send  reinforce- 
ments north  in  trains.  Though  Sir  Francis 
Elliot  assured  King  Constantine  that  this  per- 
mission to  use  his  own  railways  to  defend  his  own 

399 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

country  would  be  granted,  it  was  not.  The 
king  had  ah-eady,  in  compliance  with  his  offer, 
begun  the  southward  transportation  of  his  troops 
from  Thessaly,  and  despite  the  sudden  invasion 
of  the  Venizelists,  he  did  not  halt  the  work. 

Fortunately  for  Greece,  Colonel  Trikoupis 
had  not  depended  upon  the  railways  to  reinforce 
the  loyal  garrison  of  Ekaterina,  now  occupying 
the  foothills  west  of  that  town.  His  troops 
crossed  the  Meluna  heights,  joined  JMajor  Mitsas 
at  Kolokouri,  and  took  possession  of  Condou- 
riotissa  and  Keramidi.  Within  a  week  of  the 
crossing  of  the  Alacmon  river  bj^  the  "anti-Bul- 
garian" army,  JNIajor  Bartzoukas  and  his  Veni- 
zelist  revolutionists  were  surrounded  on  all  sides 
but  the  sea.  Had  the  Greek  navy  still  been  in 
Greek  hands,  the  entire  revolutionary  force  could 
have  been  captured  or  destroyed. 

King  Constantine's  orders  to  Colonel  Trikou- 
pis were:  "Spill  no  Greek  blood.  We  are 
brothers  all,  even  those  who,  misguided,  fight 
against  the  State."  The  loyal  commander,  there- 
fore, merely  informed  the  Venizehsts  that  they 
were  encircled  and  covered  by  artillery,  and 
awaited  developments.     IMajor  Bartzoukas  tele- 

400 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREECE 

graphed  General  Sarrail  to  come  to  his  rescue. 
On  November  5,  a  detachment  of  French  arrived 
post  haste  and  occupied  the  town,  the  railway 
station,  and  the  roads  leading  southward.  The 
Venizelist  invasion  of  Greece  was  over. 

On  the  failure  of  their  enterprise,  the  Venize- 
lists  claimed  that  they  had  only  moved  southward 
to  seize  the  railway  at  Ekaterina,  the  northern- 
most point  to  which  trains  were  run  from  Athens, 
and  thus  ensure  that  those  desiring  to  leave 
Athens  to  join  the  Venizelist  movement  should 
not  be  stopped.  But  on  the  arrival  of  the  Veni- 
zelists  in  Ekaterina,  before  thej^  were  aware  that 
their  manoeuver  had  failed,  they  boasted  loudly 
that  all  Thessaly  was  Venizelist,  that  the  Thessa- 
lians  were  only  waiting  the  signal  to  throw  off 
*'the  yoke  of  the  tyrant"  (Constantine  I)  and 
join  the  "anti-Bulgarian"  army.  They  declared 
openly  that  they  proposed  to  march  upon  Athens 
and  dethrone  King  Constantine  and  asserted  that 
the  whole  of  Thessaly  would  rise  to  join  them  as 
they  went.  Captain  Alexander  Zannos,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  "provisional  government"  committee, 
stated  to  me  that  the  first  aim  of  the  Venizelos 
government  was  not  to  fight  the  Bulgarians,  but 

401 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  dethrone  the  king  and  conquer  Hellas.  Even 
the  French  officer  in  command  of  the  detachment 
sent  to  the  rescue  of  Major  Bartzoukas  mildly 
remarked  that  he  supposed  ''the  only  way  out 
of  the  muddle  was  to  run  King  Constantine  and 
his  family  out  of  Greece."  Evidently,  however, 
he  knew  very  little  about  the  actual  situation  in 
Greece. 

As  I  had  just  come  through  Thessaly  on  my 
way  to  join  the  Venizelist  army,  I  knew  how 
hollow  were  the  boasts  of  the  Venizelists  that  all 
of  northern  Greece  was  for  the  Cretan.  Even  in 
Ekaterina  itself,  a  Macedonian  town,  the  invad- 
ing troops  received  a  sullen  welcome  from  the 
local  population.  One  thing  also  was  made  evi- 
dent in  the  descent  of  the  Venizelists  toward 
Thessaly — that  many  of  the  men  enrolled  in  the 
"anti-Bulgarian"  army  remained  unwillingly, 
and  as  soon  as  they  approached  open  country, 
in  easy  touch  with  old  Greece,  they  were  off  over 
the  mountains  to  their  homes.  The  week  that 
]Major  Bartzoukas's  force  spent  at  Ekaterina 
cost  him  a  fifth  of  his  effective  in  desertions. 

There  was  no  discipline,  no  organization  among 
the  Venizelist  troops.     Everybody  gave  orders, 

402 


VENIZELIST  INVASION  OF  OLD  GREECE 

and  none  obeyed  them.  The  men,  too,  who  had 
honestly  enlisted  to  fight  the  Bulgars  were 
shocked  and  disillusioned  by  this  attempt  at  civil 
war  in  Greece  itself.  "These  other  men  are  our 
brothers,"  a  Venizelist  evzonc  said  to  me,  speak- 
ing of  the  loyalists.  "I  did  n't  volunteer  to  fight 
them;  I  volunteered  to  fight  the  Bulgars." 
Colonel  Trikoupis  voiced  a  similar  sentiment. 
"Nothing  would  please  me  better,"  he  declared, 
"than  to  fight  the  Bulgars  beside  my  old  com- 
rades with  whom  I  studied  nine  years  in  a  mili- 
tary school  in  France.  But  I  will  not  fight  for 
Venizelos  or  under  Venizelos.  I  will  fight  for 
my  country,  under  my  king,  or  I  shall  not  fight. 
You  will  find  most  Greeks  feel  the  same  way." 


403 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

ADMIRAL   DARTIGE   DU   FOUKNET   IN    CONTROL 

While  the  revolutionary  attempt  to  invade 
old  Greece  was  meeting  a  decisive  check  at  the 
hands  of  the  constitutional  Government,  events 
were  marching  rapidly  toward  disaster  both  in 
Athens  and  Saloniki.  In  the  Macedonian  capi- 
tal the  Venizelists  renewed  and  further  embit- 
tered their  attacks  on  King  Constantine,  em- 
boldened by  like  attacks  which  they  read  daily 
in  the  British  and  French  press.  "L'Opinion," 
a  subsidized  French  daily  published  in  Saloniki, 
gave  the  keynote  of  abuse.  Of  King  Constan- 
tine's  assurance  to  the  Allies  that  he  had  no  in- 
tention of  attacking  General  Sarrail's  rear: 

A  lie  in  foiiii  and  substance,  which  would  not  deceive 
even  His  Simpleness,  the  crown  prince — who  will  soon, 
we  hope,  be  no  more  than  the  nephew  of  his  uncle.^  ^ 

Suppose  even  that  the  king  this  time  has  not  lied, 
and  that  order  reigns  in  Athens.  .  .  .^ 

1  The  Kaiser. 

2  "L'Opinion,"  Oct.  20,  1916. 
slbid.,  Oct.  22,  1916. 

404* 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURxXET 

Of  the  Greek  sovereign  himself: 

A  comedy  king,  who  does  not  know  how  to  do  any- 
thing but  talk.^  .  .  .  King  Constantino  who,  to-day, 
bears  the  just  burden  of  his  infamies  and  of  the  retaha- 
tions  to  his  repeated  treasons.^ 

And  finally,  as  an  ingenuous  statement  of  the 
aim  of  the  ambitious  Cretan: 

It  is  probable  that  Mr.  Venizelos  and  his  collabora- 
tors will  shortly  be  able  to  transfer  to  Athens  the  seat 
of  their  government,  which  will  no  longer  be  provi- 
sional, but  definitive.^ 

Xot  one,  but  every  Venizelist  organ  in  ^lace- 
donia,  was  engaged  in  this  sort  of  thing.  The 
members  of  the  "provisional  government"  with 
whom  I  talked  at  Ekaterina  were  even  more 
violent  in  speech  than  these  printed  fulminations. 
While  Venizelos  was  being  pictured  in  the  House 
of  Commons  by  Sir  Robert  Cecil  as  a  patriot 
sacrificing  his  ambitions  to  fight  his  country's 
enemies  with  neither  rancor  nor  sinister  purposes 
toward  his  sovereign,  in  Athens  no  less  than  in 
Saloniki  a  propaganda  was  at  work  to  dethrone 
King  Constantine  and  put  Venizelos  in  his  place 
as  president  of  a  nominal  republic. 

1  And   this   from   Venizelos  "L'Opinion,"  Oct.   20,   1916. 

2  Ibid.,  Oct.  22,  191G.  3  ibid.,  Oct.  23,  1916. 

405 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Under  this  influence  the  commander  of  the 
AlHed  fleet,  now  permanently  estabhshed  in 
Keratsina  Bay,  off  the  Piraeus,  promptly  fell. 
He  was  assiduously  courted  by  the  Venizelists. 
Save  on  the  rare  occasions  when  he  saw  the  king 
to  formulate  some  new  demand,  he  was  in  touch 
only  with  those  who  were  now  openly  plotting 
the  overthrow  of  the  truly  democratic  Greek 
monarchy.  If  he  was  misled  by  the  information 
presented  to  him  to  prove  that  King  Constan- 
tine's  popularity  with  the  Greek  people  was  ficti- 
tious, the  blame  may  perhaps  rest  better  upon  the 
Anglo-French  secret  police,  which  had  long  since 
ceased  to  be  (if,  indeed,  it  ever  had  been)  an  or- 
ganization to  advise  the  Allied  governments  of 
actual  conditions  in  Greece,  and  had  become  an 
organization  of  Venizelist  propaganda. 

An  example  of  the  character  of  their  work  was 
offered  at  this  period.  A  series  of  letters,  pur- 
porting to  have  been  written  by  government 
Deputy  Kalimasiotis,  and  tending  to  reveal  a  vast 
plot  to  supply  German  submarines  with  fuel  oil 
from  Greece,  was  published  in  the  Venizelist 
press,  and  reproduced  in  London,  Paris,  and  New 
York.     The  publication  of  these  alleged  letters 

406 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOUUNET 

came  just  after  two  small  Greek  vessels,  the 
Angheliki  and  the  Kiki  India,  had  been  sunk, 
presumably  by  German  submarines,  and  within 
gunshot  of  the  nets  protecting  the  xlllied  tieet 
in  Keratsina  Bay  from  submarine  attack.  The 
fact  that  hostile  submarines  could  with  impunity 
approach  so  closely  the  anchorage  of  the  Allied 
war-ships  was  in  itself  disconcerting;  the  charge 
that  they  were  supplied  from  Greece  set  the 
Entente  naval  authorities  by  the  ears.  Acting 
on  the  assumption  drawn  from  the  pretended 
correspondence  of  Deputy  Kalimasiotis,  Admiral 
Dartige  du  Fournet  announced  his  intention  of 
employing  the  Hellenic  light  flotilla,  heretofore 
merely  sequestrated,  to  combat  hostile  sub- 
marines, and  promptly  hoisted  the  French  flag 
on  the  ships  he  had  seized  less  than  a  month  be- 
fore. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  international  law  the 
sequestration  of  the  Hellenic  navy  was  by  no 
means  justifiable,  it  is  true;  but  to  hoist  the 
French  flag  on  the  ships  so  sequestrated  and  to 
use  them  while  the  nation  to  which  they  belonged 
still  remained  neutral  created  an  entirely  new 
precedent  in  the  maintenance  of  "tlie  freedom  of 

407 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

the  seas."  It  was  one  which  could  be  possible 
only  because  Greece  was  small  and  the  Allies  big 
enough  and  strong  enough  to  enforce  any  de- 
cision they  might  make.  The  Kalimasiotis  let- 
ters proved  to  be,  and  were  admitted  by  the 
Allied  diplomatists  to  be,  impudent  forgeries; 
but  as  a  pretext  for  employing  the  Hellenic  navy 
in  the  Allies'  warfare  they  had  served  their  pur- 
pose. If  wrong  had  been  done  on  the  strength 
of  them,  no  attempt  was  made  to  right  it. 

The  admiral's  action  was  taken  on  November 
7.  It  fanned  into  flame  again  all  the  resentment 
of  the  Greeks  over  their  cavalier  treatment  at  the 
hands  of  the  Allies  that  King  Constantine  had 
been  at  such  pains  to  quiet.  Fortunately,  how- 
ever, French  Deputy  Benazet  arrived  in  Athens 
at  this  juncture  and  had  a  long  conversation  with 
the  Greek  monarch.  He  was  convinced  at  once 
of  the  king's  honesty  and  sincerity,  as  every 
man  not  wholly  hypnotized  by  the  Venizelists 
always  was,  and  set  about  unofficially  trying 
to  find  a  solution  to  the  whole  fabric  of  needless 
friction  which  Venizelos  and  his  followers  had 
woven  to  separate  the  Greek  sovereign  and  the 
Allies.     The  formula  he  found  was  to  reestablish 

408 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

a  relationship  of  confidence  between  the  Entente 
and  King  Constantine.  When  he  suggested 
this  to  JSL  Guillemin,  the  latter  cried: 

"Are  you  trying  to  ruin  me?" 

"I  am  trying  to  serve  France  for  once  in  a 
way,"  Deputy  Benazet  is  reported  as  replying 

M.  Benazet's  talk  with  the  king  hinged  on 
the  extraordinary  suspicions  that  the  Allied 
governments  continued  to  harbor  against  King 
Constantine  despite  the  fact  that  the  latter  still 
kept  open  his  offer  of  military  cooperation  with 
the  Allies.  He  appealed  to  the  Greek  sovereign 
to  make  a  still  further  sacrifice  to  convince  the 
Entente  of  his  sincerity,  and  admitted  that  it  was 
no  fault  of  Constantine  I  that  his  sincerity  was 
still  in  question.  To  drive  this  appeal  home,  the 
British  and  French  ministers,  on  November  9, 
issued  a  communique  calling  the  attention  of 
Premier  Lambros  to  "the  state  of  public  opinion 
in  Paris  and  London  where,  after  the  evidence 
of  the  good-will  of  the  Allied  governments  re- 
cently given  in  the  Ekaterina  affair,  it  is  not 
understood  why  no  efficacious  measures  have 
been  taken  by  the  Greek  Government  to  end  the 

409 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

agitation   kept   up   in   quarters   hostile   to   the 
Entente." 

The  king  was  well  aware  that  the  Entente's 
"evidence  of  good-will"  in  the  Ekaterina  affair 
had  been  dictated  solely  by  a  desire  to  save  the 
Venizelist  invaders  from  capture  by  the  loyal 
troops,  not  to  save  old  Greece  from  an  invasion 
of  which  it  had  never  been  in  danger.  Neither 
was  he  ignorant  that  what  "public  opinion"  in 
i-espect  to  Greece  there  was  in  London  and  Paris 
had  been  manufactured  by  the  governments  of 
both  countries  to  save  their  own  political  skins, 
following  the  failure  of  their  policy  in  the  near 
East.  He  realized  indeed  that  in  England  at 
least  the  press  campaign  against  him  had  been 
conducted  really  rather  to  force  Sir  Edward 
Grey  out  of  office  than  for  any  reasons  relating 
to  Greece.  Though  in  no  sense  taken  in  by  the 
patent  chicane  of  this  communique.  King  Con- 
stantine  was  so  eager  to  reach  an  understanding 
with  the  Allies  that  he  passed  it  by  and  offered 
to  meet  Deputy  Benazet  half-way  in  any  con- 
ciliatory action  he  might  suggest.  M.  Benazet 's 
proposal  was  in  substance  as  follows:  the 
Gre^k  Government  had  immediate  need  of  its 

410 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

armament,  largely  to  parry  any  attempt  at  attack 
from  the  revolutionists.  Should  an  arrangement 
for  the  military  cooperation  between  Greece  and 
the  Allies  be  reached  later,  this  armament  could 
readily  be  replaced  by  the  Entente  before  Greece 
would  be  called  upon  to  engage  in  actual  hostili- 
ties. General  Sarrail  was  in  desperate  straits 
for  lack  of  certain  equipment,  notably  mountain 
artillery.  If,  therefore,  the  Allies  were  willing 
to  guarantee  constitutional  Greece  against  the 
possibility  of  any  attack  by  the  revolutionists, 
what  prevented  King  Constantine,  as  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  Hellenic  armies,  from 
lending  the  Allies  some  part  of  the  equipment 
they  required?  To  reinforce  his  suggested  plan, 
Deputy  Benazet  pointed  out  to  the  Greek  mon- 
arch that  such  an  act  of  magnanimity  on  his  part 
would  undoubtedly,  once  for  all,  dispose  of  any 
further  suspicions  maintained  by  the  Allied 
governments. 

It  is  an  earnest  of  the  singleness  of  King  Con- 
stantine's  purpose  to  work  in  harmony  with  the 
Allied  powers  that  he  finally  agreed  to  think  the 
suggestion  over  and  to  do  what  he  could  to  ft)r- 
ward  a  better  understanding  between  himself 

411 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

and  the  Entente.  Deputy  Benazet,  on  his  part, 
was  to  seek  quite  unofficially  to  obtain  the  erec- 
tion of  a  neutral  zone  between  Macedonia  and  old 
Greece,  across  which  the  French  themselves 
should  see  that  no  revolutionary  influence  could 
pass  to  thrust  Greece  into  civil  war.  In  all  of 
this  negotiation  the  Greek  monarch  recommended 
Deputy  Benazet  to  the  utmost  discretion,  how- 
ever, pointing  out  that  the  recent  manoeuvers  of 
the  Allies  in  Greece  had  succeeded  in  creating  in 
Hellas  what  Baron  von  Schenck  had  failed  to 
accomplish  in  two  years  of  work — an  active  senti- 
ment of  hostility  to  the  Allied  powers,  which 
would  have  to  be  handled  with  great  tact. 

To  aid  in  realizing  this  friendly  understanding, 
General  Roques,  the  new  chief  of  the  French 
staff,  arrived  from  Saloniki,  where  he  had  been 
visiting  the  Allied  Macedonian  front,  and  con- 
ferred with  King  Constantine  on  the  military 
details  of  the  proposed  arrangement.  He  in- 
creased the  desire  of  the  Allies  from  a  few  moun- 
tain batteries  to  virtually  the  entire  equipment 
of  the  Hellenic  army,  as  well  as  to  the  use  and 
control  of  the  automobile  road  from  Itea,  on  the 
Gulf  of  Corinth,  to  Bralo,  and  of  the  Athens- 

412 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

Saloniki  railway  from  Bralo  to  Saloniki,  as  a 
possible  line  of  retreat  for  Sarrail's  forces. 
Also,  he  treated  the  matter  as  all  settled,  despite 
King  Constantine's  reminder  that  it  was  not  only 
far  from  settled,  but  would  require  time  and  very 
adroit  handling  to  carry  through  even  part  of  the 
program  as  originally  conceived. 

The  French  contention  that  the  Greek  sover- 
eign exercised  the  powers  of  an  absolute  monarch, 
able  to  impose  his  decisions  upon  the  Hellenic 
people  at  any  moment,  besides  being  contrary  to 
the  case,  here  set  the  French  themselves  on  a 
false  route.  They  were  willing  enough  to  profit 
by  this  alleged  absolutism  of  Constantine  I  w^hen 
it  was  to  their  advantage,  and  they  sought  to  do 
so  now.  Proceeding  from  the  assumption  that 
the  Greek  monarch  wielded  at  least  the  same  dic- 
tatorial powers  of  which  they  had  had  evidence 
in  Venizelos's  method  of  handling  his  followers, 
they  expected  King  Constantine  to  order  the 
surrender  of  Greece's  armament  to  the  Allies 
without  further  ado.  The  Greek  sovereign's 
power  with  the  Hellenic  people,  however,  lies  in 
his  reflecting,  not  dictating,  their  will.  He  not 
only  could  not  do  all  that  was  expected  of  hhn, 

413 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

but  would  not.  As  a  high  permanent  Greek 
official  put  it,  "It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  any 
government  consenting  to  surrender  the  arms 
and  munitions  of  the  Greek  army  to  anybody." 
Whatever  King  Constantine's  benevolence  to- 
ward the  Entente  might  be,  here  he  was  face  to 
face  with  the  fact  that  the  arms  of  the  Greek 
people  belong  to  the  Greek  people.  They  had 
bought  them  with  their  own  money,  by  privation 
and  sacrifice.  Inhabiting  a  land  only  of  recent 
years  adequately  policed,  each  man  regarded  his 
rifle  as  a  part  of  himself.  It  might  be  stored  in 
the  arsenal,  but  it  was  his  personal  property, 
ticketed  with  his  own  name  and  mobilization- 
number.  He  had  used  it  in  two  wars  and  carried 
it  through  ten  months  of  mobilization.  When 
he  went  to  the  arsenal,  he  expected  to  find  it  there 
waiting  him.  For  all  his  love  of  the  koumharos, 
not  even  the  koumbaros  could  lend,  much  less 
sell,  the  Greek  reservist's  rifle. 

One  thing,  however.  King  Constantine  did  do 
as  an  earnest  of  his  desire  to  promote  a  better  un- 
derstanding with  the  Allies.  On  November  11, 
as  commander-in-chief  of  the  army,  he  decreed 
that  the  officers  of  constitutional  Greece  who  de- 

414 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

sired  to  join  the  Allies  at  Saloniki  would  be  free 
to  resign  from  their  rank  in  the  army  and  leave 
Athens.  The  effect  of  this  concession  was  far 
from  what  might  have  been  expected.  The 
Allies  took  it  as  a  sign  of  weakness,  not  of  sin- 
cerity, on  the  part  of  the  Greek  sovereign,  and 
at  once  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  presented 
the  Hellenic  Government  with  a  demand  in  form 
for  the  immediate  surrender  to  the  Allies  of  ten 
batteries  of  mountain  artillery  and  the  delivery 
"within  the  shortest  possible  delay"  of  the  follow- 
ing war  material; 

Sixteen  batteries  of  field  artillery,  with  1000  rounds 
of  ammunition  for  each  gun;  16  [that  is,  6  in  addition 
to  the  10  already  mentioned]  batteries  of  mountain 
artillery,  with  1000  rounds  for  each  gun;  40,000  Man- 
licher  rifles,  with  8,800,000  rounds  of  rifle  ammunition ; 
l-JfO  machine-guns,  with  a  proportionate  quantity  of 
ammunition ;  and  50  military  trucks. 

Save  in  the  matter  of  machine-guns  and  rifles, 
this  was  virtually  the  entire  available  equipment 
of  the  Hellenic  army.  Once  the  admiral's  de- 
mand were  complied  with,  the  Greeks,  w'ith  a 
revolution  on  their  hands  and  two  formidable 
foreign  armies  within  their  frontiers,  would  be  as 
helpless  as  the  Belgians  under  German  rule. 

415 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

As  justification  of  his  amazing  demand,  the 
French  admiral  began  his  note  by  laying  great 
stress  upon  the  fact  that  "the  Entente  powers 
have  recognized  formally  the  right  of  Greece  to 
remain  neutral  in  the  present  conflict."  Just 
why  the  right  of  Greece,  any  more  than  that  of 
Holland  or  Switzerland,  to  remain  neutral  should 
require  recognition  did  not  appear  from  this  in- 
teresting document.  The  admiral  went  on,  most 
appropriately,  to  recite  a  few,  a  very  few,  ex- 
amples of  the  benevolence  toward  the  Entente 
of  the  neutrality  hitherto  maintained  by  Greece. 
"Nevertheless,"  he  added,  "the  deliveiy  to  the 
Bulgarians  of  Fort  Rupel  and  Cavalla  and  espe- 
cially the  abandonment  in  those  places  of  im- 
portant war  material  has  upset  the  equilibrium 
to  the  profit  of  the  Entente's  enemies  in  a  man- 
ner of  very  grave  import."  He  did  not  attempt 
to  explain  why  it  had  taken  the  Allies  almost 
six  months  to  discover  the  upsetting  of  equilib- 
rium to  which  he  referred,  or  why  the  Allied 
military  authorities  in  Macedonia  had  consist- 
ently turned  a  deaf  ear  to  repeated  urgings  by 
General  Moscopoulos  and  Premier  Zaimis  to  up- 
set the  equilibrium  in  their  own  favor  and  occupy 

416 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

that   23art   of   eastern   ^Macedonia   subsequently 
seized  by  the  Bulgarians. 

On  the  whole,  the  admiral's  reasoning  was  as 
transparent  as  it  was  specious.  As  a  final  slap 
in  the  face  of  Greek  pride,  he  reiterated  a  pre- 
vious offer  to  pay  for  the  Greek  light  flotilla, 
which  he  had  seized,  and  now  offered  to  pay  for 
the  war  material  he  was  demanding.  To  cap 
the  tact  of  his  note,  he  added: 

The  material  must  be  delivered  at  the  Athens  station 
of  the  Thessalian  railway,  whence  I  shall  send  it  to 
Saloniki ;  and  I  demand  that  an  officer,  appointed  by 
the  minister,  be  sent  to  me  that  the  details  of  execution 
of  these  measures  may  be  arranged  with  him. 

Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet's  note  reminded 
the  Lambros  cabinet  of  nothing  so  much  as  the 
methods  of  the  Turkish  pashas  of  the  days  before 
the  war  of  independence.  There  was  not  the 
faintest  possibiHty  that  any  such  astonishing 
ultimatum  would  be  accepted  by  the  Greek 
people,  whether  or  not  the  king  wished  to  accept 
it.  I  talked  to  many  Greeks  in  every  walk  of 
life  in  the  fortnight  which  intervened  between  the 
presentation  of  the  admiral's  demand  and  his 
short-lived  effort  to  enforce  its  compliance.     I 

417 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

found  no  one  who  did  not  express  a  determination 
to  lay  down  his  life  at  once  in  defense  of  what 
remained  of  the  sovereignty  of  Greece  rather 
than  accede  to' what  every  one  regarded  as  this 
final  indignity  heaped  upon  a  long-suffering 
people. 

At  first  the  alternative  to  acceptance  was 
presented  as  a  blockade  of  Greece  and  the  star- 
vation of  the  Greek  people.  Prince  Nicholas 
summed  up  the  situation  thus: 

In  the  crisis  confronting  Greece  to-day,  when  the 
Entente  Powers  have  demanded  the  virtual  disarming 
of  the  Greek  people,  no  statement  of  fact  can  reach 
the  world  at  large  save  by  permission  of  the  Entente. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  British  and  French  press  is 
filled  with  accounts  of  what  has  taken  place  in  Greece 
which  give  only  one  side;  no  statement  of  the  Greek 
case  has  yet  been  presented,  or  in  the  nature  of  things 
can  be  presented,  until  after  the  war,  when  Greece  may 
have  ceased  to  exist. 

Nevertheless,  our  situation  is  so  pitiable,  the  Entente 
handling  of  affairs  of  Greece  has  been  so  blind  to  the 
interests  of  the  Entente  Powers  themselves,^  that  it 
seems  to  me  some  hasty  statement  of  a  few  of  the  facts 
should  be  given  light  at  once. 

We   are   confronted  with   this   alternative:  to   turn 

iCf.  Mr.  George  Renwick,  correspondent  of  the  "Daily  Chron- 
icle" of  London:  "The  errors  and  lack  of  imagination  and  knowl- 
edge of  the  Entente  diplomats  are  responsible  for  nearly  all  the 
genuine  opposition  to  the  abandonment  of  neutrality  which  exists 
in  the  country.     "War  Wanderings,"  p.  243. 

418 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

over  to  one  of  the  belligerents  arms  and  munitions  be- 
longing to  our  arni}^  with  which  to  fight  the  other  bel- 
ligerent, thus  forcing  us  into  the  war  whether  we  will 
or  no ;  or  to  suffer  measures  of  pression  including  the 
stoppage  of  our  supplies  from  such  neutral  countries 
as  the  United  States,  amounting  in  a  short  time  to  the 
starvation  of  our  people.  We  have  this  choice:  de- 
clare war  or  starve.     We  have  no  other. 

It  is  as  if  the  British  Government  were  to  say  to  the 
United  States,  "If  you  will  not  fight  at  once,  you  must 
give  up  all  the  arms  and  ammunitions  in  your  arsenals, 
strip  your  army  of  its  equipment,  and  turn  it  over  to 
us  so  that  we  may  fight  the  Germans  with  your 
weapons." 

Greece  is  small  and  the  United  States  is  large;  but 
principle  is  not  a  matter  of  size.  That  is  precisely 
the  principle  upon  which  the  demands  of  the  Entente 
have  been  made  upon  us. 

The  most  significant  point  brought  out  by 
King  Constantine's  brother  was  the  fact  that  no 
impartial  statement  of  the  real  feehng  of  the 
Greek  people  in  the  matter  of  the  surrender  of 
their  arms  was  permitted  to  filter  out  to  the  world 
at  large.  And  not  only  were  the  United  States 
and  the  other  neutrals  kept  in  ignorance  of  what 
was  going  on,  but  the  people  of  Great  Britain 
and  France  as  well.  Between  November  16  and 
December  1,  I  sent  twenty  messages  containing 
in  one  form  or  another  the  information  that  in- 
sistence upon  disarming  Greece  would  meet  with 

419 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

resistance  from  the  Greek  people.  Every  such 
message  was  stopped  by  the  Allied  censors.  No 
one  was  permitted  to  tell  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  or  of  France  or  England  either,  what  the 
admiral's  demands  meant,  nor  the  inevitable  out- 
come of  persisting  in  them,  evident  from  the  first 
to  any  intelligent  observer  in  Greece  at  the  time. 

To  the  Venizelists,  the  admiral's  demand  was 
the  very  desire  of  their  hearts.  They,  too,  were 
well  aware  that  no  Government  of  Greece  would 
or  could  yield  to  this  last  exigency  on  the  part  of 
the  Entente,  and  they  were  delighted  with  the 
prospect  of  an  unavoidable  conflict  between  the 
King  of  the  Hellenes  and  the  Allied  powers. 
They  felt  certain  that  a  dethronement  of  the 
Greek  monarch  must  result  from  such  a  clash, 
and  they  at  once  set  about  perfecting  their  ar- 
rangements to  take  full  advantage  of  what- 
ever the  outcome  might  prove.  "This  moment 
must  not  take  us  by  surprise,"  as  Pamicos  Zym- 
brakakis  wrote  Venizelos,  "but  quite  the  contrary, 
it  must  find  us  prepared  and  ready  to  create  a 
de  facto  situation,  in  collaboration  with  the 
Entente  Powers,  and  especiallj^  with  France. . .  ." 

I  am  unable  to  bring  myself  to  believe  that 
420 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  was  a  conscient 
party  to  the  Venizelist  plot  to  effect  a  coup 
d'etat  in  conjunction  with  his  demand  and  his 
eventual  attempt  to  force  the  surrender  of  the 
armament  of  Greece.  It  is  undoubtedly  true 
that  the  motive  of  the  demand  was  the  necessity 
for  supplying  such  force  as  Venizelos  had  been 
able  to  gather  in  Saloniki  with  an  equipment 
which  the  force  itself  was  too  insignificant  to 
justify  the  Allies  in  going  to  the  trouble  to  fur- 
nish. It  seemed,  and  still  seems  to  me,  despite 
what  ]Mr.  Venizelos  wrote  his  adherents  in 
Athens,^  fairly  evident  that  the  Venizelists  would 
not  have  taken  so  much  pains  at  this  juncture  to 
persuade  the  French  admiral  of  their  strength  in 
Athens  had  they  and  he  been  really  working  in 
concert. 

Beginning  with  the  day  of  the  presentation  of 
the  demand,  the  entire  Venizelist  organization  in 
Athens  and  the  Piraeus  set'themselves  to  convince 
the  admiral  that  he  had  only  to  remain  firm  in  his 
insistence  to  see  the  king  weaken  at  the  last  mo- 
ment and  tamely  give  up  the  arms  required. 
The  first  step  to  this  end  was  to  persuade  the 

1  Appendix  6. 

4S1 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

French  sailor  that  the  Venizehsts  themselves  were 
the  masters  of  public  opinion  in  Greece,  and  could 
dictate  the  king's  course  to  him  when  the  mo- 
ment for  action  should  come.  As  Venizelos  ex- 
pressed it  when  writing  to  General  Corakas  on 
November  7:  "What  remains,  after  all,  of  this 
famous  king,  who  is  still  your  king?  Not  even 
the  shadow  of  himself!  His  authority  has  been 
reduced  to  shreds  by  one  concession  after  another. 
His  war  teeth  have  been  pulled  one  by  one." 

To  convince  the  admiral  of  his  power  in  Athens 
as  well  as  in  Saloniki,  Venizelos  sent  a  number  of 
his  trusted  agents  to  the  capital  with  unlimited 
funds.  Demonstrations  in  favor  of  France  and 
Great  Britain,  and  even  of  Venizelos,  were  or- 
ganized and  protected,  directed  often  by  the 
French  and  British  legations.  Never  were  the 
Anglo-French  secret  police  so  active,  all  to  per- 
suade the  commander  of  their  own  fleet  of  what 
they  had  reason  to  know  was  not  so — that  he 
could,  without  a  struggle,  take  Greek  arms  from 
the  sons  of  those  who  had  fought  at  Karpenisi  and 
died  at  Missolonghi.  A  hired  claque  accom- 
panied the  admiral's  every  visit  to  the  capital  with 
cheers  for  France.     I  recall  one  "demonstration" 

422 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

on  a  day  of  rain,  when  every  demonstrator  was 
supplied  with  overshoes  and  an  umbrelhi,  rarities 
in  Greece,  by  the  thoughtful  ^^enizelist  stage- 
managers.  There  was  nothing  subtle  about  this 
fictitious  enthusiasm  for  the  Entente  at  a  moment 
when  the  admiral's  demand  hung  over  the  Greek 
people.  The  heads  of  the  Anglo-French  secret 
police  earned  their  money  in  full  view  of  the 
audience,  leading  the  cheers  and  prompting  the 
"demonstrators"  in  their  lines.  Whether  the 
French  admiral  knew  that  a  revolution  was  being 
plotted  in  his  shadow  or  not,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  believe  that  his  own  secret  service  was  not 
aware  of  it,  and  actually  aiding  it  as  actively  as 
they  could. 

On  November  19,  Admiral  Dartige  du  Four- 
net  had  a  long  talk  with  King  Constantine,  mak- 
ing a  number  of  minor  supplementary  demands 
in  keeping  with  his  comprehensive  formal  note 
of  three  days  before.  The  Greek  sovereign  made 
his  position  clear  to  the  French  sailor,  explaining 
that  even  had  he  wished  to  lend  the  Allies,  as  a 
mark  of  good-will,  certain  batteries  of  mountain 
artillery,  compliance  with  any  such  sweeping 
demands  as  the  admiral's  was  out  of  the  question. 

423 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  admiral,  however,  was  obdurate.  Had  he 
not  been  the  recipient  of  one  ovation  after  an- 
other at  the  hands  of  the  people  of  Athens  and 
the  Piraeus?  He  smiled  jovially  over  the  king's 
earnest  words  when  I  talked  with  him,  and  left 
the  palace  with  the  impression  that  he  knew  more 
about  the  feelings  of  the  Greek  people  than  did 
King  Constantine. 

After  this  interview  King  Constantine  said  to 
me:  "I  am  still  perfectly  willing  to  carry  out 
the  proposal  made  by  the  Caloguyeropoulos  cabi- 
net to  join  the  Allies  on  the  basis  of  a  guarantee 
of  the  integrity  of  Greece,  though  the  oppor- 
tunity for  an  effective  military  cooperation  with 
Rumania  is  now  gone,  and  little  would  be  gained, 
either  by  the  Allies  or  by  us,  through  Greece's 
coming  in  at  the  beginning  of  winter,  when  no 
sort  of  a  campaign  can  be  reasonably  undertaken 
in  Macedonia.  But  as  for  giving  up  the  arms  of 
my  people  as  the  admiral  demands,  he  must  be 
mad!  I  could  not  do  it  if  I  wanted  to;  and,  as 
a  Greek  myself,  I  would  not  do  it  if  I  could." 

But  even  this  possibility  of  arrangement  was 
precluded  by  a  personal  message  from  Premier 
Briand  which  M.  Guillemin  delivered  to  King 

424- 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

Constantine  the  same  day.  The  French  prime 
minister  began  his  communication  with  a  tribute 
to  the  candor  and  sincerity  with  which  the  Greek 
monarch  had  dealt  with  the  Entente.  He  recog- 
nized for  the  second  time  that  the  King  of  the 
Hellenes  had  honestly  offered  to  join  the  xVllies 
w^ithout  the  shadow  of  a  thought  of  betrayal  or 
chicane  in  his  proposal,  and  admitted  that  there 
was  ho  reason  to  suppose  that  King  Constantine 
personally  desired  to  assist  the  enemies  of  the 
Entente.  This  complete  profession  of  faith  in 
the  Greek  sovereign  on  JNI.  Briand's  part  is  the 
more  significant  in  view  of  the  mass  of  matter 
to  the  contrary  against  which  his  Government's 
censorship  had  not  raised  a  finger.  This  matter 
had  been  freely  published  in  Paris,  and  spread 
broadcast  over  the  world,  while  any  account  of 
King  Constantine's  action  and  attitude  which 
agreed  with  ^I.  Briand's  own  statement  of  them 
was  promptly  suppressed  by  the  Allied  censors. 

The  French  premier  went  on  to  review  the 
events  leading  to  the  position  in  which  Greece  and 
the  Allies  found  themsehes,  and  to  suggest 
various  remedies  calculated  to  relieve  the  tension ; 
but  he   made  no   promise   tliat   anything   King 

425 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Constantine  could  do  would  really  lessen  the  pres- 
sure then  being  applied  to  Greece,  and  offered 
no  guarantee  that  the  measures  of  control  of  food- 
supply,  railways,  telephones,  posts,  telegraphs, 
shipping,  and  police  of  Greece,  then  being  exer- 
cised by  the  Allies,  would  not  be  increased  in  the 
future.  He  stated  finally  that  the  only  solution 
of  the  situation  as  it  then  stood  was  not  in  Greece's 
loyally  becoming  an  ally  of  the  Entente,  as  the 
Greek  monarch  had  proposed,  but  in  King  Con- 
stantine's  recalling  Venizelos  to  power  and  plac- 
ing the  Government  of  Greece  entirely  in  the 
hands  of  the  Cretan. 

The  French  statesman  indulged  in  no  vagaries 
about  the  constitutionality  of  the  course  he  pro- 
posed, no  nonsense  about  the  sovereign  will  of  the 
Greek  people.  The  Briand  cabinet  was  judge  of 
what  the  Greek  people  wanted.  King  Constan- 
tine could  execute  its  orders  or  take  the  conse- 
quences. 

King  Constantine  informed  M.  Guillemin  that 
he  was  ready  to  take  any  consequences  his  refusal 
to  recall  Venizelos  might  entail.  Not  he  alone, 
but  the  Hellenic  people,  regarded  the  Cretan  as  a 
traitor,  and  he  would  not  recall  him  to  power  un- 

426 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

der  pressure  of  any  will  save  that  of  the  people 
of  Greece. 

So  efficacious  were  the  receptions  and  demon- 
strations staged  for  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet 
by  the  Venizelists  that  they  seemed  to  convince 
him  not  only  that  there  would  be  no  trouljlc 
about  compliance  with  his  demand  for  the  sur- 
render of  the  armament  of  Greece,  but  that  he 
was  already  master  of  Hellas.  It  is  difficult  to 
conceive  of  any  other  reasoning  which  could  jus- 
tify in  his  own  eyes  his  order  of  November  19, 
addressed  to  the  envoys  extraordinary  and  min- 
isters plenipotentiary  of  Austria-Hungary,  Bul- 
garia, Germany,  and  Turkey,  summoning  them 
to  leave  the  neutral  country  to  which  they  were 
accredited  by  nine  o'clock  of  the  morning  of  'No- 
vember 22.  The  action  has  one  precedent  of 
which  I  know  in  history :  General  Tscheppe  von 
Wildenbriick's  famous  order  to  French  Minister 
IVIollard  to  quit  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Luxem- 
burg about  which  there  was  so  much  indigna- 
tion in  Fi'ance  and  England  in  the  first  days  of 
the  war. 

Long  since  without  any  sort  of  communication 
with  their  resi:)ective  govermnents,   and  conse- 

427 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

quently  of  little  practical  use  to  their  countries, 
the  four  diplomatists  in  question  were  little  loath 
to  leave  Greece.  In  Entente  circles  in  Athens 
the  admiral's  order  was  hailed  as  if  it  had  been 
the  news  of  a  great  Allied  victory.  It  was 
freely  prophesied  that,  once  the  diplomatic  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Central  empires  were  gone,  all 
would  be  plain  sailing  for  Venizelos  and  the  En- 
tente in  Greece.  It  was  characteristic  of  the 
superficiality  of  most  of  the  political  dispositions 
taken  by  the  Allied  governments  in  the  near 
East  that  the  possibility  that  the  attitude  of  the 
Hellenic  people  was  dictated  by  a  natural  and 
rudimentary  patriotism,  not  by  German  propa- 
ganda, was  never  for  a  moment  considered.  The 
Greek  was  not  supposed  to  have  an  opinion  of  his 
own :  if  he  did  not,  as  did  Venizelos,  indorse  every 
phase  of  the  Entente's  shifting  policy  in  the  near 
East,  he  must  be  a  recipient  of  German  money, 
supporting  Germany's  cause. 

The  ministers  of  the  Central  empires  left 
Greece  without  incident.  Their  departure,  na- 
turally, made  no  change  whatever  in  the  attitude 
of  the  Greek  Govermnent  or  the  Greek  people, 
since  that  attitude  was  dictated  by  Hellenic,  not 

428 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

Germanic,  sentiment/  Neither  did  their  depar- 
ture make  any  decrease  in  the  activity  of  German 
submarines  in  the  eastern  JNIediterranean,  since 
the  submarines  were  not  supphed  from  Greece, 
but,  in  all  probability,  from  Dalmatia,  Bulgaria, 
and  Constantinople,  as  every  Allied  naval  officer 
of  intelligence  was  frank  to  admit. 

Save  as  a  needless  offense  to  Greece's  inde- 
pendent sovereignty,  the  departure  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Central  empires  left  King  Con- 
stantine  cold.  He  had  other  troubles  on  his 
hands.  On  November  20  he  called  a  crown 
council  and  laid  before  it  M.  Briand's  suggestion 
that  Venizelos  be  recalled  to  rule  Greece,  report- 
ing the  repty  he  had  made  the  French  minister. 
The  assembly  of  all  the  former  premiers  of 
Greece  unanimously  approved  their  sovereign's 
stand.  The  king  then  laid  before  tlie  council  a 
plan  for  a  recognized  war  cabinet,  to  be  formed 
in  case  the  Allied  governments,  recognizing  their 
false  step  in  demanding  the  recall  of  Venizelos, 

1  Even  George  Renwick,  special  correspondent  of  the  London 
"  Daily  Chronicle,"  by  no  means  an  admirer  of  the  Greel<  sov- 
ereign and  a  strong  partisan  of  Venizelos,  says  of  King  Con- 
stantine:  "I  think  tiiat,  however  much  he  admires  the  Germans, 
he  is  more  pro-Greek  than  pro-German."  "War  Wanderings," 
p.  248. 

4^9 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

were  to  accept  the  Greek  monarch's  proposal  of 
mihtary  cooperation  with  the  AUies,  which  King 
Constantine  insisted  be  still  held  open.  This 
was  also  approved.  On  the  head  of  any  sur- 
render of  the  arms  of  Greece  to  the  Allies  or 
anybody  else,  the  crown  council  pronounced  a 
definitely  negative  judgment. 

On  November  21,  therefore.  Premier  Lambros 
replied  directly  to  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet 
in  a  note  to  which  was  appended  a  comparative 
list  to  shov/  that  the  Allies,  in  taking  possession 
of  the  Greek  fleet,  the  arsenal,  the  fortifications 
of  the  Piraeus,  Saloniki,  Fort  Dova  Tepe,  and 
Fort  Karabournou  had  already  received  of  Greece 
far  more  in  the  way  of  arms  and  munitions  than 
all  the  Bulgars  had  obtained  in  taking  Fort 
Rupel,  Serres,  Drama,  and  Cavalla. 

Disposing  thus  finally  of  the  French  admiral's 
claim  that  any  military  equihbrium  in  the  near 
East  had  been  upset  by  the  Bulgarian  seizure  of 
certain  Greek  munitions.  Premier  Lambros  went 
on  to  inform  the  admiral  that  Hellenic  public 
opinion  rendered  the  surrender  of  the  arms  of 
Greece  utterly  impossible,  and  to  rejoin  to  the 
admiral's   demand   "a  very  categorical   refusal, 

430 


GKOROr:,   DUKE  OK  SI'AUTA 
Hoir  appurcnl  to  the  throni;  of  Greece 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

while  nourishing  the  hope  that  you  will  recognize 
that  the  refusal  is  based  upon  good  grounds." 
At  the  same  time  Foreign  ^linister  Zalocoslas 
advised  the  Entente  diplomatists  in  Athens  of 
the  decision  of  the  Hellenic  Govermiient.  The 
public  announcement  in  xVthens  that  the  Govern- 
ment had  formally  refused  to  accede  to  the  ad- 
miral's demand  was  the  signal  for  a  popular  dem- 
onstration for  King  Constantine  that  might  well 
have  given  the  Allied  ministers  something  to 
think  about. 

So  far  no  definite  threat  had  been  made  by  the 
Allies  of  what  w^ould  happen  to  Greece  in  event 
of  refusal  to  the  admiral's  demand,  and  no  precise 
date  had  been  set  for  compliance  with  it.  On 
November  24,  however,  Admiral  Dartige  du 
Fournet,  applauded  and  encouraged  by  Ven- 
izelists  and  the  Venizelist  press,  set  any  doubts 
on  the  latter  subject  at  rest.  lie  wrote  in  reply 
to  Premier  Lambros's  note : 

I  find  it  difficult  to  admit  that  public  opinion,  in  a 
country  as  enlightened  as  Greece,  can  regard  as  insup- 
portable the  idea  of  ceding  to  Powers  for  which  Greece 
affirms  a  benevolent  neutrality  arms  and  munitions  not 
in  the  hands  of  her  army,  but  completely  unused,  in  her 
arsenals   ... 

Referring,  therefore,  to  mv  previous  note  of  Xovcm- 
433 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

bcr  16,  I  have  the  honor  to  confirm  to  the  royal  Hel- 
lenic government  that,  as  a  proof  of  its  good-will,  I 
demand  ten  batteries  of  mountain  artillery  not  later 
than  December  1,  the  date  of  the  delivery  of  the  rest 
of  the  war  material  demanded  not  to  be  later  than 
December  15. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  that  not  only  the  Hel- 
lenic Government,  but  the  Greek  people,  consid- 
ered the  admiral's  reasoning  fatuous.  On  the 
same  basis  the  Allies  might  just  as  well  have 
demanded  the  surrender  of  the  arms  of  Switzer- 
land or  Holland  or,  at  that  time,  of  the  United 
States.  "If  my  demand  is  not  complied  with," 
the  admiral  concluded,  "I  shall  be  obliged  to  take, 
after  December  1,  whatever  measures  the  situa- 
tion may  require." 

Meanwhile,  the  undeclared  blockade  of  Greece, 
which  the  Allies  had  quietly  put  into  effect  on 
September  30,  was  already  telling  upon  the  popu- 
lation of  the  country.  Venizelos  and  his  fol- 
lowers regarded  the  evident  symptoms  of  popu- 
lar dissatisfaction  with  undisguised  delight.  The 
Cretan  had  written  his  chief  representative  in 
Athens,  General  Corakas,  on  November  7: 

The  specter  of  hunger  and  of  suffering  is  already 
abroad  throughout  old  Greece,  and  will  become  still 
more  terrible,  so  soon  as  a  new  and  very  efficacious 

434. 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

blockade  shall  be  established.  The  soul  of  the  people 
is  already  at  the  last  limit  of  human  endurance ;  so  near 
is  this  that  one  last  blow — which  is  imminent — will  suf- 
fice to  finish  it. 

It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  Venizelos,  or  in- 
deed to  the  British  and  French  ministers  to 
Greece,  that  the  effect  of  the  intolerable  tyranny 
of  Allied  police  control,  of  slow  starvation 
through  Allied  food-control,  of  industrial  throt- 
tling resultant  upon  their  control  of  railways  and 
telegraphs,  of  constant  threat  of  invading  revo- 
lutionists, and  finally,  as  a  last  straw,  of  the 
admiral's  stupefying  demand  for  surrender  of 
the  defensive  arms  of  Greece,  might  prove  a 
boomerang  falling  upon  the  Venizelists,  even 
upon  the  Allied  powers,  great  as  they  w^ere  and 
real  as  was  the  fundamental  affection  of  the 
Hellenic  people  for  France.  Starting  from  a 
fixed  idea  that  King  Constantine  held  the  Greeks 
in  unwilling  subjection  only  by  force  of  arms, 
Venizelos  and  the  Allies  saw  all  things  through 
glass  of  that  shade.  The  actual  fact  to  the  con- 
trary, as  patent  to  any  disinterested  observer  as 
is  the  Acropolis,  escaped  them  as  completely  as 
if  it  did  not  exist.  It  required  a  dire  experience 
to  drive  home  to  them  the  falsity  of  their  assump- 

435 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

tion.     They  had  not  long  to  wait  that  experience. 
The  day  following  the  admiral's  fixing  of  De- 
cember 1  as  the  date  for  delivery  of  the  arms,  the 
whole  of  Greece  was  in  ferment  over  the  pros- 
pect.     In  Thessaly,  where,  in  compliance  with 
King  Constantine's  promise  to  withdi'aw  his  force 
in  excess  of  peace  strength,  artillery  was  being 
shipped  southward,  the  population  stopped  the 
trains,  dragged  the  guns  from  the  cars,  and,  the 
women  pulling  on  the  ropes  as  well  as  the  men, 
they    hid   their    precious    cannon    in    the    hills. 
Telegrams  poured  in  on  the  king  and  Premier 
Lambros  stating  that,  were  the  arms  of  Greece 
to  be  surrendered,  the  Hellenic  people  would  ex- 
act instant  punishment  of  those  who  had  con- 
sented to  the  surrender.     The  sailors  dispossessed 
of  the  Greek  fleet,  those  sailors  who  so  short  a 
time  before  had  been  strikingly  pro-English  in 
their  sentiments,  petitioned  their  commander-in- 
chief  in  these  terms: 

Your  sailors,  who  have  been  driven  from  their  glori- 
ous ships,  who  have  been  subjected  to  contempt  and 
humiliation  from  which  their  hearts  still  bleed,  aban- 
doned their  ships  only  because  you  wished  it.  To-day 
our  guns  and  our  cannon,  so  lately  covered  with  laurels 
for  having  brought  back  the  sweet  light  of  liberty  to  so 
many   millions   of   our  brothers,   are   demanded.     We 

436 


ADMIRAL  DARTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

shall  not  permit  that  a  hand  be  laid  upon  them  under 
any  circumstance.  All  of  your  sailors,  without  ex- 
ception, have  decided  to  give  the  last  drop  of  our  [sic J 
blood  for  the  defense  of  the  honor  of  the  anns  of 
Greece.  Give  them  not  up !  They  shall  be  taken  only 
by  those  who  tread  upon  the  dead  bodies  of  the  last 
of  us ! 

Heroics,  if  you  please,  but  there  cannot  be 
the  slightest  question  that  precisely  this  feeling 
inspired  nine  out  of  every  ten  among  the  Greeks. 
It  was  not  difficult  to  ascertain  this  feeling  de- 
spite the  hysterical  tone  of  the  Venizelist  press, 
which  claimed  daily  that  talk  of  resistance  was 
mere  futile  "bluff,"  as  the  Franco- Venizelist 
organ  "Le  JSIessager  d'Athenes"  termed  it.  One 
had  only  to  walk  about  the  streets  and  talk  to 
people  at  random  to  discover  a  sentiment  com- 
parable to  that  which  moved  the  members  of 
"The  Boston  Tea  Party."  The  Venizelist  press 
only  seiTcd  to  deceive  the  admiral  and  the  British 
and  French  ministers.  In  an  editorial  entitled 
"Bluff  or  ^lenace,"  every  statement  of  which  was 
a  childish  falsification  of  facts,  the  "^lessager" 
referred  to  the  incontestable  manifestations  of 
popular  determination  to  resist  the  surrender  of 
arms  as  "the  most  pitiful  comedy  ever  played  at 
the  expense  of  a  people  and  their  sacred  inter- 

437 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ests";  and  in  another  article,  on  November  29,  it 
conjured  the  AUies  to  "redeem  by  pitiless  punish- 
ments your  indefensible  weakness  toward  those 
who  have  deceived  you  and  Greece."  The 
French  admiral  and  the  Allied  diplomatists  took 
this  purely  political  froth  seriously.  Their  cre- 
duHty  cost  the  lives  of  many  Frenchmen. 

In  the  dilemma  created  by  an  almost  unani- 
mous national  sentiment  against  suiTcnder  of 
arms,  and  the  blindness  of  the  British  and  French 
ministers  to  the  existence  of  this  sentiment,  the 
Lambros  government,  on  November  27,  appealed 
to  the  neutral  powers  for  sympathy  in  the  situa- 
tion which  a  formal  note  exposed.  Mr.  Zalo- 
costas  wrote : 

The  right  of  might  has  been  set  up  against  every 
legitimate  protest  of  Greece.  The  royal  government 
desires  that  the  neutrals  take  into  consideration  that 
the  spirit  of  conciliation  and  equity  which  it  has  shown 
has  not  been  able  to  spare  the  Hellenic  people  the  grave 
vicissitudes  through  which  their  Fatherland  is  pass- 
ing at  this  moment.  We  are  not  strong  enough  to 
avoid  them,  for  they  are  the  inevitable  result  of  Greece's 
geographical  position  and  of  the  conflict  in  interests 
of  great  belligerent  Powers. 

It  is  significant  that  my  despatch  transmitting 
the  bare  text  of  this  official  document  to  the  press 

438 


ADMIRAL  DAKTIGE  DU  FOURNET 

of  one  of  the  neutral  countries  to  which  it  was 
directed  was  suppressed  hy  the  AUied  censorship. 
When  I  expressed  surprise  at  this  poHcy  of 
hiding  the  truth  to  one  of  my  friends,  a  member 
of  one  of  the  AUied  legations,  he  replied: 

"It  may  be  unwise,  as  you  say.  But  you  can 
make  up  your  mind  to  one  thing:  w^e  do  not 
propose  to  let  anything  go  out  of  Greece  that 
does  not  suit  our  book."  ^  It  is  difficult  even  yet 
to  see  how  it  suited  the  book  of  the  Allies  to  keep 
the  people  of  France  and  England  in  blank  ig- 
norance of  a  situation  which,  in  its  working  out, 
needlessly  cost  so  many  lives,  Allied  and  Greek 
alike. 

1  a.  M.  Gabriel  Hanotaux,  La  Guerre  dans  les  Balkans  et 
V Europe,  p.  'Mil:  "We  know  very  well  that  European  public 
opinion  is  bcinf^  twisted  about  by  a  well  staged  bluff,  and  that 
things  are  not  altogether — if  indeed  at  all — what  they  seem." 


439 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE   BATTLE   OF   ATHENS 

On  November  27,  King  Constantine,  con- 
vinced that  the  people  of  England  and  France 
and  possibly  even  their  governments  were  in 
ignorance  of  the  actual  situation  in  Greece,  sent 
a  telegram  to  Premier  Briand  through  his 
brother.  Prince  George,  revievring  the  situation 
in  its  entirety.  Covering  thirty-four  type-writ- 
ten pages,  the  Greek  monarch's  message  consti- 
tutes one  of  the  ablest  documents  of  the  war.  In 
it  he  refers  to  the  four  distinct  occasions  upon 
which  he  has  been  willing  and  ready  to  join 
Greece  with  the  Allies,  and  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  he  had  not  even  then  received  a  direct 
reply  to  his  last  offer.  He  destroys  with  cate- 
gorical and  circumstantial  denials  the  whole 
artificial  fabric  of  his  pro-Germanism  that  had 
been  woven  at  such  trouble  in  England,  France, 
and  the  United  States,  declaring  that  neither 
Greece  nor  he  personally  had  any  agreement, 

440 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

understanding,  or  treaty  whatsoever  with  the 
Germans  as  to  the  course  of  Greece  in  the  war. 
He  takes  up  the  charge  that  German  submarines 
have  been  supphed  from  Greece,  and  quotes 
Admiral  Pahner,  the  head  of  the  British  naval 
mission  in  Greece,  as  stating  that  tliere  was  no 
evidence  to  show  that  German  submarines  had 
ever  been  so  supplied,  or  that  the  Greeks  were 
cognizant  of  the  operations  of  the  German  sub- 
marines. In  reply  to  loose  assertions  that  Greek 
officers  had  furnished  information  or  assistance 
of  any  kind  to  the  Germans,  he  enters  a  sweeping 
denial,  meeting  every  point  raised  in  this  connec- 
tion by  sensational  British  and  French  journal- 
ists. As  to  his  alleged  violation  of  the  Greek 
Constitution  in  dismissing  Venizelos  from  tlie 
premiersliip  in  October,  1915,  he  states  that,  had 
the  Cretan  stood  for  election  on  December  19, 
1915,  and  been  chosen  by  the  Hellenic  people,  he 
would  gladly  have  called  him  to  form  a  govern- 
ment as  he  had  previously  called  him  following 
the  elections  of  June  13,  1915,  and  that  he  had  so 
advised  Venizelos  himself. 

Pro})ably  had  Premier  Briand  been  willing  to 
publish   this  message  all   tlie   misunderstanding 

441 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

still  subsisting  in  respect  of  Greece  would  have 
disappeared,  and  the  case  of  King  Constantine 
would  have  appeared  for  the  first  time  in  the  light 
of  candor,  even  despite  the  efforts  of  the  Anglo- 
French  press  to  make  the  Greek  sovereign  out  a 
German  agent.  Certainly,  had  the  facts  been 
brought  to  light  at  that  juncture  the  events  of 
December  1  and  2  could  scarcely  have  occurred. 
Nor  would  it  have  been  necessary  for  King  Con- 
stantine to  issue  in  May,  1917,  a  formal  state- 
ment denj^ing  the  grotesque  assertions  published 
in  all  seriousness  by  "Le  Temps"  of  Paris,  on 
April  11,  1917,  which  by  their  very  absurdity 
betray  the  weakness  of  the  whole  Allied  diplo- 
macy in  the  near  East.^ 

1  "His  Majesty  the  King,  having  read  in  the  newspaper  *Lt 
Temps'  No.  20,367  under  date  of  April  11,  an  article  entitled 
The  Record  of  the  King  of  Greece,  categorically  denies  in  the 
most  formal  manner  the  views  attributed  to  him  in  this  article. 
His  Majesty  has  never  until  now  had  any  knowledge  whatso- 
ever of  the  German  or  other  publications  mentioned  in  said  ar- 
ticle, according  to  which  he  is  alleged  to  have  expressed  a  hope 
of  the  success  of  the  arms  of  one  of  the  belligerents  or  to  have 
expressed  himself  in  hostile  fashion  towards  one  of  the  belliger- 
ents or  spoken  in  any  way  whatsoever  in  the  sense  of  said  opin- 
ions attributed  to  him. 

"It  is  equally  false  that  His  Majesty  has  ever  recei%'ed  from  any 
sovereign  of  the  group  enemy  to  the  Entente  any  telegrams,  note 
or  counsel  of  any  kind  on  the  subject  of  the  policy  he  should 
follow  'to  maintain  his  throne.' " 

"Finally,  His  Majesty  the  King  disclaims,  for  his  part,  every 

442 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

On  Xoveniber  27,  also,  Admiral  Dartige  du 
Fournet  made  his  last  call  upon  King  Constan- 
tine.  His  visit  brought  no  alteration  in  a  situa- 
tion big  with  the  menace  of  death.  In  the  course 
of  his  conversation  with  the  Greek  sovereign  he 
expressed  concern  for  the  safety  of  certain  Veni- 
zelist  merchants  who  feared  a  looting  of  their 
shops  in  the  event  of  actual  hostilities.  The  king 
promised  that  their  shops  should  be  protected, 
and,  that  there  might  be  no  question  of  what  he 
had  promised,  directed  Count  ^lercati,  the  grand 
marshal  of  his  court,  to  write  the  admiral  in 
the  following  sense.  I  quote  the  letter  in  its 
essential  part,  as  it  has  since  been  claimed  that 
by  it  King  Constantine  gave  an  assurance  that 
the  admiral's  landing  force  would  meet  no  re- 
sistance: 

Neither  the  persons  nor  the  private  liouses  nor  the 
shops   of   tlie  Venizelists   are   in   danger,   for  both   tlie 

allegation  in  said  article  according  to  which  it  appears  lliat  he 
or  his  government  ever  harbored  hostile  intentions  towards  the 
Entente. 

"On  the  order  of  His  Majesty  the  King,  the  marshal  of  the 
royal  court  begs  His  Excellency  the  French  Minister  to  be  good 
enough  to  transmit  to  the  government  of  the  French  Republic 
the  above  declarations  which  have  been  made  for  the  ])urpose  of 
dispnsintr  of  any  misunderstandings  wliich  may  have  been  created 
in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  France." 

443 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

police  and  the  military  authorities,  with  a  view  to  as- 
suring the  maintenance  of  public  order,  will  exercise 
the  strictest  surveillance  and  will  guarantee  their  se- 
curity. 

It  is  understood  that  these  high  assurances  are  given 
only  on  the  formal  condition  that  neither  the  secret 
police  employed  by  the  Allied  Powers  nor  the  forces 
to  be  landed  will  proceed  to  the  arrest,  imprisonment, 
or  deportation  of  Hellenic  subjects,  and  on  a  like  un- 
derstanding that  the  Venizelists  shall  abstain  from  any 
activity  calculated  to  inspire  reprisals. 

Not  only  is  no  assurance  given  that  a  landing 
force  will  not  meet  with  resistance,  but  the  ad- 
miral's intention  to  land  a  force  is  here  plainly 
recognized  both  by  King  Constantine  and  the 
admiral.  The  latter's  subsequent  contention  that 
he  was  "ambushed"  by  the  Greek  sovereign  must 
therefore  seem  rather  futile. 

He  had  plenty  of  other  grounds  for  knowing 
that  his  landing  party  would  meet  with  desperate 
resistance,  however.  Every  press  telegram  sent 
from  Greece  passed  through  the  hands  of  Ad- 
miral Dartige  de  Fournet's  own  control  officers 
in  the  Athens  telegraph  office.  The  sole  reason 
for  the  existence  of  this  censorship  was  to  ac- 
quaint the  admiral  of  any  information  which 
might  be  gleaned  from  press  and  private  de- 
spatches sent  over  Greek  wires.     On  November 

444 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

21  such  a  telegram  announced  in  advance  that 
the  Greek  Government's  formal  reply  to  the  ad- 
miral's demand  would  be  a  "categorical  refusal"; 
on  November  24  another  such  message  read, 
"Resistance  expected";  on  November  25: 

"The  Greek  Government  claims  that  even  if  it  coiihl 
have  considered  the  delivery  of  the  arms  before,  it  cer- 
tainly cannot  now.  .  .  .  The  population  of  Tournavo 
are  forcibly  preventing  the  southward  shipment  of  the 
artillery  stationed  there,  fearing  that  it  might  be  given 
up  to  the  Allies." 

On  November  27  another  reference  was 
made  in  a  press  telegram  to  "resistance  to  the 
Entente's  seizure  of  the  arms" ;  on  November  20 
a  despatch  repeated  the  crown  council's  "support 
of  the  Government's  decision  that  it  is  impossible 
to  surrender  the  arms";  the  same  date  still  an- 
other despatch  quoted  the  Greek  chief  of  staff. 
Colonel  Stratigos,  as  saying: 

The  arms  of  Greece  will  not  be  surrendered.  .  .  . 
The  rifles  demanded  are,  as  they  were  ninety  years  ago 
at  the  time  of  our  struggle  for  liberty,  largely  in  the 
hands  of  the  Greek  people,  who  will  know  how  to  use 
them,  now  as  then,  in  defense  of  the  independence  of 
Greece.  The  world  is  probably  ignorant  of  our  situa- 
tion, but  we  are  ready  to  fight  until  civilization  cries 
down  what  is  taking  place  in  Greece  to-day. 

On  November  30  another  message  asserted: 
445 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

"The  determination  to  resist  any  debarkment  is 
incontestable.  .  .  .  Bloodshed  to-morrow  most 
probable."  The  same  day  King  Constantine 
himself  was  quoted  in  a  telegram  as  declaring, 
"While  no  attack  on  the  Allies  is  even  thought  of, 
the  armament  of  Greece  will  not  be  surrendered, 
nor  will  any  one  be  permitted  to  seize  the  arma- 
ment by  force."  Finally,  on  the  eve  of  the  ad- 
miral's landing,  a  telegram  was  sent  saying: 
"All  arrangements  have  already  been  completed 
to  resist  any  effort  to  take  the  arms."  Every  one 
of  the  above  messages  was  passed  upon  by  the 
French  admiral's  own  control  officers.  Every 
one  was  stopped  by  the  control  officers;  yet  every 
one  spoke  the  literal  truth  which,  had  the  admiral 
believed  it,  would  have  saved  the  lives  of  many 
gallant  Frenchmen. 

It  is,  however,  unnecessary  to  go  further  into 
the  matter  of  what  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet 
had  indirect  reason  to  expect  in  landing  his  troops 
on  the  neutral  soil  of  Greece.  The  testimony  of 
his  official  orders  issued  to  the  landing  force  is 
conclusive.  These  orders,  signed  by  "the  Cap- 
tain commanding  the  1st  corps  of  debarcation  of 
squadron  A,  Pugliesi-Conti,"  were  taken  among 

446 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

the  effects  of  a  captured  French  officer  during 
the  battle  on  December  1.  Order  Xo.  12  makes 
general  provisions  for  a  serious  land  expedition, 
with  supplies  for  two  days'  fighting.  The  muni- 
tions distributed  are:  "b/.  The  armament:  96 
cartridges  and  8  blank  cartridges."  The  sani- 
tary service  is  especially  provided  for: 

The  wounded  ^  will  be  either,  according  to  circum- 
stances, sent  aboard  the  Provence,  to  be  redistributed 
to  the  ships  to  which  they  belong,  or  put  in  hospital  at 
the  Russian  hospital  in  the  Piraeus,  under  the  usual  con- 
ditions. 

Even  the  maps  to  be  employed  are  indicated 
with  precision: 
b/.  Maps  Used. 

The  troops  operating  in  the  Piraeus  will  employ  the 
M2r.oo  maps  on  blue  print  paper  which  will  be  distrib- 
uted to  them. 

The  troops  operating  in  the  open  country  will  use 
the  /^.-,oo  map  mounted  on  linen,  which  will  be  dis- 
tributed to  them. 

Eventually  for  operations  inside  Athens,  the  plan 
mounted  on  linen  will  be  used,  which  will  be  distributed. 

Besides,  the  map  divided  into  squares  for  artillery 
fire  will  be  that  of  Kt.oo  distributed  for  this  purpose  to 
the  battalion  commanders,  to  the  aviators,  and  to  the 
ships  designated  to  do  the  firing. 

1  The  word  evacv/'s  is  here  used  in  distinction  from  the  word 
muladen,  also  used,  but  tu   refer  to  the  sick. 

447 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  admiral  and  the  Alhed  governments  have 
since  sought  to  give  the  impression  that  the  land- 
ing force,  while  engaged  in  a  peaceful  demonstra- 
tion, was  treacherously  attacked  by  the  Greeks. 
JNIinute  preparations  are  here  seen  for  an  expedi- 
tion in  which  fighting  is  expected  and  wounded 
are  to  be  cared  for.  A  naval  bombardment  of 
an  open  city,  filled  with  women  and  children, 
is  foreseen.  Order  'No.  13,  dated  November  28, 
and  marked  secret  in  red  letters,  defined  the 
object  of  the  landing  party: 

General  objective  of  the  corps  of  debarcation: 
The   corps   of  debarcation   must   establish  itself   bj/ 
force  if  necessary  in  the  positions  the  occupation  of 
which  by  our  troops  constitutes  a  menace  to  Athens. 
The  positions  to  be  occupied  are: 

(1)  The  whole  of  the  Njmphs,  Pnyx  and  Philop- 
papos  hills,  dominating  Athens  ; 

(2)  The  Zappeion  and  its  vicinity.  .  .  . 
The  buildings  to  be  seized  are: 

(a)  A  powder  magazine  (marked  A  on  the  annexed 
map)  ; 

(b)  The  buildings  belonging  to  the  Greek  engineer 
corps,  called  Rouf  (point  B) ; 

(c)  A  cartridge  factory  (point  C  on  map). 
Besides,  the  corps  of  debarcation  must  militarily  oc- 
cupy the  Pirseus. 

Scarcely  a  peaceable  demonstration!  It  will 
be  noted  that  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Zappeion, 

448 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

within  400  yards  of  it,  in  fact,  is  King  Constan- 
tine's  palace.  One  final  touch  is  that,  according 
to  this  secret  order,  a  detachment  designated  as 
the  "first  special  group"  is  to  hivouac  in  the  muni- 
cipal theater,  in  the  heart  of  the  city!  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  see  how,  with  these  preparations  for 
every  contingency,  either  the  admiral  himself  or 
his  Government  could  cry  that  their  force  had 
been  "treacherously  led  into  an  ambush"  by  King 
Constantine. 

On  November  29,  when  there  seemed  to  be 
no  prospect  of  adjusting  the  difficulties  between 
the  French  admiral  and  the  Greek  Government, 
King  Constantine,  as  constitutional  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  Greek  armies,  called  for  volunteers 
to  defend  the  arms  of  Greece  against  any  attempt 
to  seize  them  by  force.  From  dawn  of  No- 
vember 30  thousands  upon  thousands  of  men 
streamed  in  from  every  point  within  a  day's 
journey  of  the  Hellenic  capital.  Not  a  man  was 
called  to  the  colors;  all  who  came,  came  of  their 
own  free  will.  At  the  various  barracks  peasants' 
smocks  were  exchanged  for  the  uniforms  that  had 
done  service  at  Kilkis  and  Janina;  shepherds' 
crooks  gave  way  to  the  familiar  rifle  that  each 

451 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

man  had  carried  through  two  wars.  Every  kind 
of  conveyance  was  used  to  hring  the  men  of 
Greece  to  the  side  of  their  king:  donkeys,  two- 
wheeled  carts,  cahs,  oxen-driven  farm-wagons. 
Thousands  walked,  carrying  flags  and  singing 
route  songs.  Had  the  French  minister  but 
glanced  out  of  his  window  during  the  day,  he 
would  have  seen  the  street  before  his  legation 
black  with  men  on  their  way  to  lay  down  their 
lives  in  a  fight  against  four  of  the  greatest  mili- 
tary powers  of  the  world  to  defend  their  little 
stock  of  worn  and  faithful  guns. 

But  no  one  looked,  no  one  heeded.  The 
Venizelist  press  cried  "Bluff"  in  the  face  of  this 
almost  unanimous  demonstration  of  the  will  of 
a  liberty-loving  people,  and  the  British  and 
French  ministers  believed  this  cheap  printed  folly 
rather  than  their  own  eyes.  It  was  not  until 
that  afternoon  that  some  of  the  British  corre- 
spondents came  to  me,  saying  that  matters  looked 
serious. 

"Of  course,"  I  said.  "They  have  looked  seri- 
ous for  a  week,  but  you  would  not  see  it." 

"But  the  king  is  mad,"  they  rejoined.  "He 
cannot  fight  England,  France,  Russia,  and  Italy 

452 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

combined.  He  will  listen  to  you;  tell  him  he  is 
digging  his  own  grave." 

"So  far  as  I  know,"  I  replied,  "King  Constan- 
tino does  not  mean  to  fight  anybody  if  he  can 
help  it.  If  your  men  remain  on  their  war-ships, 
where  they  belong,  there  will  be  no  light.  If  they 
land  and  march  on  Athens,  there  will  be  more 
of  a  fight  than  they  look  for.  How  would  you 
feel  if  a  big  Spanish  force  landed  at  Tilbury  and 
marched  on  London?  You  have  been  telling  the 
British  public  for  weeks  that  King  Constantine 
is  supported  only  by  a  handful  of  pro-German^ 
in  his  court.  Look  at  that  endless  line  of  men 
going  to  volunteer  to  fight  for  him!  Tell  your 
public  that!" 

In  the  afternoon  of  November  30,  Foreign 
JNIinister  Zalocostas  personally  took  the  Greek 
Government's  final  official  word  aboard  the 
Provence: 

The  royal  Government  has  examined  with  great  care 
the  arguments  put  forward  in  support  of  your  de- 
mands, particularly  the  argument  that  our  arms  which 
are  now  unemployed  are  to  be  used  to  combat  for  the 
freedom  of  the  soil  watered  most  generously  by  Hellenic 
blood.  The  royal  Government  is,  however,  convinced 
that  the  arms  of  Greece  are  not  destined  to  remain  for- 
ever in  her  arsenal,  for  which  reason  they  must  always 

453 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

be  ready  eventually  to  arm  Greek  soldiers  the  day  that 
Greece,  who  more  than  any  one  else  is  jealous  of  her 
rights  and  patriotic  duties  toward  the  soil  conquered 
by  Hellenic  sacrifice  and  blood,  may  be  constrained  to 
protect  the  inalienable  rights  she  has  acquired.  Nor 
would  she  in  future,  and  in  case  of  imminent  danger,  be 
in  a  position  to  do  this,  were  she  to  put  her  arms  and 
munitions  at  your  disposal,  even  under  the  condition 
of  restitution  which  you  propose.  This  viewpoint, 
unanimously  adopted  in  concert  with  the  national  will, 
is  derived  from  those  glorious  traditions  which  make 
the  Greek  people  one  with  their  arms  and  cannon,  as 
well  as  from  the  feeling  that  in  the  near  future  they 
may  be  necessary  to  their  defense.  This  conviction 
and  this  sentiment,  aside  from  the  motives  already  set 
forth  in  my  letter  of  November  22,  render  inacceptable 
your  demand,  and  oblige  the  royal  Government  again 
to  refuse. 

Late  that  evening,  also,  the  Greek  sovereign 
sent  Count  Mercati  aboard  the  Provence  as  his 
personal  representative  to  give  the  admiral  one 
last  warning  that  any  effort  to  seize  the  arms  of 
Greece  by  force  must  end  in  disaster.  The  admi- 
ral's reply  was  to  issue  a  formal  communique, 
through  the  French  Government  news  agency, 
the  "Radio": 

Many  friends  of  the  Entente  foresee  as  probable 
serious  troubles  in  the  streets  of  Athens,  and  the  vice- 
admiral,  commander-in-chief,  receives  daily  numerous 
communications  on  this  head.  He  believes  he  should 
declare  that  these  fears  happily  appear  to  him  unjusti- 

454 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

fied,  and  that  the  peaceful  inhabitants  of  the  capital 
may  be  reassured. 

Guarantees,  the  sincerity  and  value  of  which  cannot 
be  called  into  question,  have  been  furnished  him ;  and 
besides,  he  will  himself  take  the  necessary  measures 
should  the  instigators  of  trouble,  who  are  known  to 
him,  take  the  risk  in  spite  of  everything  of  disturbing 
the  public  peace. 

The  Greek  Governnient,  too,  issued  a  com- 
munique, but  not  quite  so  truculent: 

The  Government,  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  the 
sovereign,  recommends  to  the  people  of  Greece  the  wis- 
dom of  calmness  and  the  avoidance  of  all  excitement  in 
giving  expression  to  national  feelings,  or  of  hasty  ac- 
tion inconsistent  with  the  high  ideals  of  the  Greek  peo- 
ple, that  perfect  order  may  be  maintained  and  no  diffi- 
culties provoked ;  that  the  situation  may  be  saved  and 
greater  evils  conjured,  the  nation  thus  being  enabled 
to  face  every  pressure  calculated  to  wound  national 
feelings. 

Aboard  the  Provence  a  council  of  war  was 
held.  General  Bousquier,  the  French  military 
attache,  who  had  had  a  long  conversation  that 
afternoon  with  King  Constantine,  and  to  whom 
the  Greek  sovereign  had  declared  that  the  arms 
of  Greece  would  be  defended,  come  what  might, 
strongly  urged  the  abandonment  of  the  expedi- 
tion. Even  the  Anglo-French  secret  police  is 
reported  as  having  counseled  a  moderate  course. 

455 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

But  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  was  immova- 
ble. Somewhat  earlier  he  had  declared  his  pur- 
j^ose  to  a  number  of  newspaper  men  aboard  the 
Provence: 

I  shall  cede  nothing  of  my  demands  and  tolerate  no 
resistance.  I  shall  take  such  measures  against  the 
Government  as  may  be  necessary  to  compel  compliance 
with  my  demands. 

And  he  added  a  few  words  of  praise  for  the 
frank  attitude  and  friendly  disposition  of  King 
Constantine.     On  this  declaration  he  now  stood. 

Toward  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  King 
Constantine  realized  that  any  arrangement  was 
impossible.  He  placed  the  former  war  minister, 
General  Callaris,  commander-in-chief  of  the  first 
army  corps,  a  very  serious  and  capable  officer 
decidedly  friendly  to  France,  in  charge  of  the 
defense  of  the  barracks  and  military  buildings 
of  Athens  and  the  entire  mihtary  operations.  In 
sharp  contrast  to  the  admiral's  declarations  to 
the  newspaper  men,  the  king's  orders  were  con- 
cise and  absolute:  the  Greeks  were  not  to  fire 
first  under  any  circumstances.  They  were  not 
to  fire  at  all  unless  fired  upon.  In  case  of  at- 
tack, they  were  to  use  the  stocks  of  their  guns  to 

456 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

beat  off  those  who  desired  to  pass  beyond  the 
lines  being  mihtarily  guarded.  Artillery  was 
not  to  be  called  into  use  in  any  circumstances, 
save  in  event  of  an  effort  to  storm  certain  speci- 
fied points.  When  possible,  the  Greeks  were  to 
surround  the  invading  troops  and,  without  firing 
upon  them,  to  hold  them  in  the  impossibility  of 
active  hostility. 

For  some  days  the  admiral  had  been  conduct- 
ing extensive  reconnaissances  of  the  environs  of 
Athens.  Aeroplanes  had  circled  above  the  city, 
automobiles  bearing  officers  on  observation  duty 
had  crisscrossed  the  surrounding  country,  maps 
had  been  prepared,  some  of  which  were  captured 
during  the  fighting,  showing  the  various  Greek 
barracks  and  especially  the  king's  palace,  in 
colors.  Every  preparation  had  been  made  for 
striking  a  rapid,  successful  blow  at  the  military 
prestige  of  the  Greek  commander-in-chief.  Cer- 
tainly it  appeared  from  his  declarations,  after  the 
failure  of  the  expedition,  that  the  admiral  ex- 
pected very  efficacious  aid  from  the  Venizelists 
within  the  city.  Generally  speaking,  his  plan 
seems  to  have  been  to  engage  all  the  loyal  troops 
at  points  on  the  outskirts  of  the  city  or  in  quar- 

457 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ters  distant  from  the  center,  denuding  the  city 
of  proper  defenders.  While  the  Greek  forces 
were  thus  engaged,  the  Venizehsts  within  the 
town  were  to  rise,  assemble  at  given  meeting- 
jjoints,  where  a  goodly  stock  of  ammunition  for 
the  arms  already  distributed  to  them  was  stored, 
and  b}^  simultaneous  action,  at  a  given  signal  in 
various  commanding  positions  in  the  city,  to  para- 
lyze any  effort  at  organized  resistance  or  the 
return  of  the  troops  from  without  the  city  to  put 
down  the  rebellion.  In  this  way,  with  a  com- 
paratively small  number  of  men,  a  rapid  coup 
d'etat  could  be  effected,  the  king's  palace,  even, 
be  surprised,  and  King  Constantine  made  pris- 
oner. The  admiral  then,  himself  personally  on 
the  ground  with  his  landing  party,  could  step 
in  to  give  his  aid,  in  the  words  of  Pamicos  Zym- 
brakakis  writing  to  Venizelos,  "by  an  immediate 
consolidation  of  the  new  order  of  things."  King 
Constantine  would  be  deposed.  Venizelos  would 
be  called  back  to  rule  Greece.  The  Alhes  would 
secure  through  their  henchman  the  use  of  the 
entire  Greek  army  for  their  Balkan  operations, 
and  the  problem  of  the  near  East  would  be 
solved. 

458 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

On  any  other  assumption  the  presence  of  the 
admiral  with  his  landing  party,  the  use  of  so  in- 
significant an  attacking  force,  and  finally  the 
serene  confidence  of  the  admiral  in  the  success  of 
his  manoeuver,  are  inexplicable.  With  this  in 
view,  toward  nine  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  De- 
cember 1,  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  disem- 
barked some  3000  French,  British,  and  Italian 
marines,  and  marched  them  upon  the  Hellenic 
capital. 

AVhen  I  went  to  the  Piraeus  early  in  the  morn- 
ing to  witness  the  landing,  the  French  had  al- 
ready taken  complete  military  possession  of  that 
city.  On  the  way  I  saw  a  few  Greek  sentries 
on  the  road,  meager  Greek  outposts  on  Nymphs, 
Pnyx  and  Philopappos  hills  overlooking  the  city , 
a  few  soldiers  patrolling  the  Acropolis,  and  nu 
more.  The  admiral's  three  battalions  marched, 
the  first  upon  the  Greek  Government  powder- 
magazine,  the  second  upon  the  Greek  engineers' 
barracks  at  Rouf,  and  the  third  battalion,  to- 
gether with  two  companies  of  British  marines 
and  a  band,  straight  for  the  Zappeion,  where 
some  1000  French  marines  were  already  quar- 
tered.    As  the  columns  advanced,  they  picked 

459 


COxNSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

up  and  made  prisoners  the  Greek  outposts  which 
they  encountered,  calhng  into  operation  the 
king's  formal  condition  in  Count  JMercati's  note 
to  the  admiral  that  the  forces  to  be  landed  would 
not  proceed  "to  the  arrest,  imprisonment,  or  de- 
portation of  Hellenic  subjects." 

According  to  the  Greek  general  staff,  the  first 
shot  was  fired  by  the  Italian  contingent  at  Gen- 
eral Papoulas  and  a  few  officers  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Rouf.  It  is,  however,  of  little  conse- 
quence when  the  first  shot  was  fired,  since  a 
general  engagement  began  almost  at  once  at  all 
points  toward  which  the  invaders  were  advancing. 
The  French  fired  upon  a  Greek  outpost  guarding 
the  powder-magazine,  who  were  retiring  unre- 
sisting before  the  French  advance.  It  is  claimed 
that  these  shots  were  fired  with  blank-cartridges 
by  the  French  merely  to  intimidate  the  Greeks. 
How  the  Greeks  were  expected  to  know  that 
blank-cartridges  were  being  used  in  rifles  pointed 
and  fired  at  them  is  not  made  clear.  At  all 
events,  the  Allied  detachment  attacking  the  pow- 
der-magazine was  almost  six  times  as  great  as 
the  Greek  guard,  and  at  first  the  latter  retired: 
but  when  Allied  machine-guns  were  brought  into 

460 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

play,  the  Greeks  charged  and  dispersed  the  in- 
vaders, shutting  up  almost  half  this  contingent 
in  the  powder-magazine,  virtually  prisoners. 

The  seventy  Greek  soldiers  I  had  seen  at  rest 
on  Philopappos  Hill  were  assailed  by  three  Allied 
companies.  Here  there  was  no  question  of  blank- 
cartridges.  The  attack  was  made  before  the 
Greeks  could  form  to  defend  themselves.  Los- 
ing several  killed  and  wounded,  they  retired, 
leaving  the  French  marines  in  possession  of  the 
heights.  Similarly  the  Greek  guard  on  Nymphs 
Hill  were  charged  and  routed.  The  Greek  wire- 
less plant  was  seized.  The  third  Allied  battalion 
proceeded  without  serious  opposition  to  the  Zap- 
peion,  w^here  it  reinforced  the  detachment  al- 
ready there. 

Once  in  possession  of  the  points  the  admiral's 
orders  had  directed  them  to  seize,  the  Allied 
forces  did  not  cease  their  fire,  however.  As  I 
returned  from  the  Piraeus  by  way  of  Rouf,  across 
the  fields  toward  Xymphs  and  Philopappos  hills, 
a  hot  fusillade  was  in  progress  from  every  point 
the  Allies  occupied.  At  Rouf  I  found  them 
holding  the  engineers'  barracks,  but  to  no  pur- 
pose,   since   they   were    completely    surrounded 

461 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

inside  the  building,  and  virtually  prisoners. 
They  were  keeping  up  a  hot  fire,  nevertheless, 
and  the  civihan  inhabitants  of  this  crowded  quar- 
ter, about  their  normal  business,  were  forced  to 
scuttle  quickly  from  the  shelter  of  one  building 
to  that  of  another  to  avoid  drawing  an  indiscrimi- 
nate rain  of  bullets.  The  fields  between  Rouf 
and  the  Nymphs  Hill  were  dotted  with  French 
marines  calmly  retracing  their  steps  toward  the 
port.  I  stopped  one  and  questioned  him.  He 
shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"This  is  an  idiotic  business,"  he  said.  "Why 
should  we  be  fighting  the  Greeks?"  Another 
French  marine  and  a  Greek  civilian  came  up. 
The  second  marine  was  asking  the  way  to  the 
Piraeus.  I  interpreted.  The  Greek  replied 
courteously : 

"I  am  going  that  way.  Tell  them  to  follow 
me.     I  '11  show  them." 

The  last  I  saw  of  them,  the  three  were  march- 
ing across  the  fields  in  company,  as  if  their  re- 
spective countrymen  were  not  fighting  one  an- 
other a  hundred  yards  away.  I  began  to  feel 
that  the  French  marine  was  right.  It  was  an 
idiotic  business. 

462 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

As  I  climbed  Philopappos  Hill,  the  French 
were  firing  furiously  in  the  direction  of  the  city; 
it  was  difficult  for  me  to  see  at  what.  No  sentry 
challenged  me,  and  the  flank  of  the  detachment 
occupying  the  hill  was  completely  exposed  to- 
ward the  south  and  the  Pirsus-Athens  road. 
From  the  height  one  could  see  people  going 
through  the  streets  of  Athens  as  if  nothing  were 
occurring:  women  carrying  market-baskets;  boys 
standing  on  tjie  corners  looking  up  at  the  fight- 
ing, open-mouthed.  Here  and  there  a  gray- 
beard  guarded  a  cross  street  as  an  improvised 
policeman,  a  shot-gun  slung  on  his  back.  A 
Greek  Red  Cross  ambulance  drove  up  to  the  foot 
of  the  hill,  and  four  stretcher-bearers  got  out  and 
mounted  the  rise.  They  took  a  wounded  French- 
man and  two  wounded  Greeks,  lying  in  the  shel- 
ter of  separate  rocks  on  the  hillside,  bore  them 
down  the  slope  to  the  ambulance,  and  drove  away 
with  them. 

As  I  descended  the  hill  I  found  behind  every 
wall,  in  every  gully,  in  the  yard  of  every  house, 
little  khaki-clad  Greek  soldiers,  rifles  in  hand, 
standing  guard,  but  not  firing.  The  French  on 
the  hill  were  entirely  surrounded,  and  did  not 

463 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

know  it.  A  Greek  soldier  jerked  his  thumb  back 
over  his  shoulder  at  the  French,  conspicuous  in 
their  white  breeches — all  of  whom,  in  range  of 
less  than  a  hundred  yards,  could  have  been  picked 
off  in  ten  minutes  by  the  Greeks  below — and 
grinned  amiably.  A  Greek  officer  crept  up  to 
where  I  stood  above  a  ravine  filled  with  Greek 
soldiers. 

"Oh,  that 's  all  right,"  he  said  quickly,  as  if 
apologizing  for  the  careless  disposition  of  the 
French  force.  "Our  orders  are  not  to  fire. 
They  are  safe  enough." 

Passing  around  by  the  Zappeion,  I  found  the 
same  situation.  From  the  huge,  barn-like  struc- 
ture the  French  kept  up  a  grueling  fire.  But 
lying  in  the  streets  below  the  curb,  and  among  the 
bushes  of  the  garden  surrounding  the  building, 
were  Greek  soldiers  making  a  cordon  around 
the  entire  edifice.  The  admiral  and  his  men  were 
as  much  prisoners  in  the  Zappeion  as  if  they  had 
been  forced  to  surrender.  Every  time  a  sortie 
was  attempted,  a  return  fire  was  opened  upon 
them  and  they  were  forced  to  retire  again  within 
the  protecting  walls  of  the  exposition. 

The  whole  landing  party  was  at  stalemate. 
464 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS    • 

The  French  had  taken  the  initiative  and  seized 
what  they  intended  to  seize,  but  they  couid  not 
get  out  again.  Certain  British  troops,  I  learned, 
were  similarly  shut  up  witliin  the  nuid  walls  of 
the  cemetery.  Some  Italians  were  equally  pris- 
oners in  the  Italian  archaeological  school.  Fail- 
ing a  revolution  within  the  city  itself,  the  admiral 
and  his  forces  were  helpless.  I  asked  a  Greek 
general  staff  officer  the  meaning  of  the  whole 
manoeuver. 

"We  have  established  the  fact  of  an  armed 
attack  with  hostile  intent  upon  an  open  city,"  he 
replied.  "What  measures  will  be  taken  now  will 
depend  entirely  upon  the  admiral  himself."  He 
further  stated  that  some  of  the  Venizelist  Greek 
employees  of  the  Anglo-French  secret  police  had 
been  firing  from  windows  on  ununiformed  men 
going  to  the  barracks  to  volunteer  for  service. 
Both  in  the  Rouf  and  in  the  south  Acropolis 
quarters  I  had  seen  firing  upon  civilians  from 
windows,  and  had  myself  been  fired  upon.  But 
I  was  unable  to  establish  by  whom  tlie  firing  was 
done. 

In  Athens  proper,  at  noon,  it  looked  very  un- 
likely that  any  attempt  at  an  uprising  would  be 

465 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

made.  The  calculations  of  the  Venizelists  had 
badly  miscarried.  The  admiral  had  been  vic- 
torious only  in  a  way  to  bind  him  hand  and  foot. 
The  city  had  not  been  denuded  of  troops,  as 
squads  of  Greek  marines  were  patrolling  the 
streets.  Order  was  being  rigidly  maintained. 
French  and  British  officers  engaged  in  the  con- 
trol of  the  posts  and  telegraphs  went  about  in 
uniform,  umnolested.  A  British  naval  officer 
came  from  the  Pirasus  to  tea  at  the  British  lega- 
tion. He  knew  nothing  of  the  fighting.  In  the 
train  with  him  were  two  Greek  infantry  officers. 
The  train  was  fired  upon  by  the  British  from 
Nymphs  Hill,  to  the  utter  bewilderment  of  the 
naval  officer.  At  the  Athens  station  one  of  the 
Greek  officers  summoned  two  Greek  marines. 

"Where  are  you  going?"  the  Greek  officer 
asked  the  Englishman. 

"To  the  legation,"  he  answered. 

"Better  have  a  guard,"  the  Greek  replied. 
He  gave  an  order  to  the  two  marines.  "They 
will  see  you  safely  there,"  he  added,  and,  saluting, 
walked  off. 

Throughout  the  city  it  was  like  that.  Toward 
two  o'clock  the  firing  died  down  and  ceased. 

466 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

Premier  Lambros  got  into  telephone  communi- 
cation with  the  admiral,  still  a  prisoner  in  the 
Zappeion,  and  an  armistice  was  declared. 
Shortly  after  two  o'clock  I  was  leaning  over  the 
terrace  atop  my  hotel,  below  which  the  whole 
city  lay  spread  out  like  a  map.  Just  underneath 
the  Boule  was  serving  as  barracks  for  the  Greek 
sailors  policing  the  city.  A  sentry  walked  up 
and  down  before  the  gate.  Suddenly,  a  shot  was 
fired  from  somewhere.  The  sentry  droj^ped  his 
rifle  and  fell,  killed.  At  the  same  moment  M. 
Taigny,  the  French  member  of  the  International 
J'inancial  Commission,  was  looking  out  of  the 
window  of  the  Athenian  Club.  He  turned  sud- 
denly to  some  Greeks  standing  by. 

"Some  one  is  firing  from  the  windows  of  the 
'Xea  Hellas'  ofiice!"  he  exclaimed.  The  "Nea 
Hellas"  was  a  Vejiizelist  organ,  and  from  its  win- 
dows, in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  two  of  the 
sailors  in  the  Boule  inclosure  were  hit. 

Simultaneously,  in  various  parts  of  town,  fir- 
ing began,  from  windows  and  roofs  of  the  houses 
purposely  chosen  and  stocked  with  munitions  by 
the  Venizelists,  upon  the  Greek  patrols  in  the 
streets.     The   Greek  soldiers   lying  behind  the 

467 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

curb  guarding  the  Zappeion  were  thus  attacked 
in  the  back  by  a  flank  fire.  At  the  noise  of  this 
renewed  shooting  the  Allied  troops,  ignorant  of 
the  cause,  again  opened  a  fusillade,  and  the 
Greeks  around  the  Zappeion  were  caught  be- 
tween two  fires.     A  great  many  were  killed. 

With  an  armistice  declared,  the  firing  was  so 
inexplicable  that  every  one  was  confounded. 
The  French  and  British  prisoners  in  the  Zap- 
peion, believing  the  renewed  conflict  to  indicate 
the  arrival  of  reinforcements,  endeavored  to  make 
a  sortie.  But  unfortunately  they  chose  the  di- 
rection of  the  royal  palace  for  their  attempt. 
The  Greeks,  equally  confused  by  being  fired  upon 
from  behind,  and  seeing  an  attack  directed 
against  the  palace,  believed  the  armistice  had 
been  violated  by  the  invaders  and  that  an  effort 
was  being  made  to  seize  the  king  by  force. 
Light  artillery  was  therefore  called  into  play  for 
the  first  time,  and  the  admiral's  sortie  was  forced 
to  return  to  cover. 

I  had  gone  to  the  palace  the  moment  the  firing 
began  anew.  The  king  sent  Colonel  Pierre 
JNIano  to  order  the  Greek  troops  to  cease  firing 
at  once,  which  was  done.     The  prime  minister 

468 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

was  trying  to  get  the  French  admiral  by  tele- 
phone, to  ask  the  meaning  of  this  renewed  com- 
bat, after  the  declaration  of  an  armistice.  Event- 
ually, he  arranged  for  a  meeting  of  the  king  and 
the  Allied  ministers  at  the  palace  at  half-past 
five  to  discuss  the  situation.  The  firing  began 
to  die  down  again.  Suddenly,  without  warning, 
just  above  the  Acropolis,  across  the  open  city  of 
Athens,  with  its  streets  refilling  with  crowds  of 
the  curious,  with  everywhere  women  and  children 
and  non-combatants,  who  had  been  given  no  time 
to  leave,  a  steady,  methodical  fire  of  5-  and  12- 
inch  shells  from  the  guns  of  the  fleet  began  to 
fall  among  the  houses  of  the  cradle  of  civiliza- 
tion. I  have  been  under  shell-fire  frequently 
since  the  war  began,  but  I  could  not  believe  the 
monstrous  thing. 

"Surely  those  are  your  guns !"  I  said  to  a  Greek 
staff*  officer  beside  me.  He  raised  his  head  with 
that  quick  negative  gesture  so  characteristic  of 
the  Greeks. 

"Must  be  the  Allied  fleet,"  he  replied.  "An 
open  city!" 

The  king  was  in  the  garden,  with  a  pair  of 
binoculars,  watching  the  shells  as  they  cried  on 

469 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

their  way  through  the  air  like  giant  rockets.  I 
went  out  and  talked  with  him  a  moment.  As 
one  5-inch  shell  passed  just  over  a  corner  of 
the  palace  and,  flashing  between  the  Itahan  and 
Dutch  legations,  fell  into  a  tiny  laborer's  cottage 
beyond,  wrecking  the  building  in  a  whirlpool  of 
smoke  and  dust  and  flying  splinters,  King  Con- 
stantine  watched  the  house  in  silence. 

"Vive  la  Belgique!"  he  said  finally,  quietly,  as 
if  to  himself. 

Inside  the  palace  the  premier  was  again  at 
the  telephone.  The  admiral  disclaimed  all  re- 
sponsibility for  the  bombardment.  Princess 
Helen,  King  Constantine's  eldest  daughter, 
watched  the  falling  shells  from  one  of  the  win- 
dows. A  shell  dropped  just  below  it,  but,  strik- 
ing in  the  soft,  wet  ground,  did  not  explode.  She 
opened  the  window  and  looked  out  at  it  curi- 
ously as  it  lay  harmless  against  the  building. 
The  queen  came  into  the  room  where  we  sat,  seek- 
ing any  women  servants  of  the  palace  to  send 
to  the  cellars.  When  they  demurred,  she  said: 
"I    have    already    sent    my    daughter  ^    to    the 

1  Princess  Catharine,  three  and  a  half  years  old,  whose  god- 
fathers are  the  army  and  navy  of  Greece. 

470 


THE  BATTLE  OF  ATHENS 

cellar.  It  is  better  to  take  no  risks."  A  12-inch 
shell  fell  in  the  palace  garden  and  exploded. 
Huge,  jagged  pieces  flew  about,  destroying  trees 
and  shrubbery.  A  piece  two  feet  long,  four 
inches  wide,  and  with  edges  as  sharp  as  a  razor 
fell  at  King  Constantine's  feet.  Count  ^lercati 
rushed  out  to  the  side  of  his  chief,  buckling  on  a 
revolver.  God  knows  what  he  expected  to  do 
with  so  puny  an  instrument  of  war!  The  bom- 
bardment continued.  In  the  barracks  across 
from  the  Dutch  legation  shells  fell  monoto- 
nously, one  after  another.  Occasionally  one 
went  wild  among  the  newer  apartment  houses. 
Two  huts  were  hit  in  a  near-by  field ;  in  one  an  old 
woman  and  her  grandchild  were  blown  to  bits. 
In  another  the  shell  passed  through  roof  and 
walls,  flashing  harmless  between  a  mother  and 
her  baby,  sleeping  on  a  trundle-bed. 

Dusk  was  falhng  when  the  four  Allied  min- 
isters reached  the  palace.  The  precision  of  the 
fleet's  fire  had  been  improved,  and  most  of  the 
shells  were  falling  within  or  near  the  palace 
grounds,  the  bombardment  evidently  being  di- 
rected at  the  royal  residence,  with  its  women  and 
children,  as  well  as  the  King  of  the  Hellenes. 

471 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

When  the  diplomatists  arri^  cd,  King  Constan- 
tine  remounted  to  his  study  to  receive  them. 
The  bombardment  still  continued  with  methodi- 
cal accuracy.  As  the  four  ministers  entered  the 
room  where  the  king  awaited  them,  a  12-inch 
shell  went  screaming  by  the  windows. 

"Are  those  your  arguments,  gentlemen?"  the 
sovereign  asked  coolly. 


472 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

anathema! 

To  end  the  sad  business  of  December  1,  King 
Constantine  agreed  to  deliver  to  Admiral  Dartige 
du  Fournet  six  batteries  of  mountain  artil- 
lery. The  Allied  naval  authories  had  al- 
ready seized  two  batteries  of  field  artillery  on 
Corfu,  thus  making  the  king's  concession  eight 
batteries  in  all.  The  admiral,  on  his  part,  still 
a  prisoner  with  his  men  in  the  Zappeion, 
agreed  to  withdraw  his  troops  on  board  his  ves- 
sels, the  Greek  monarch  offering  to  give  them 
an  escort  aboard,  to  see  that  they  arrived  with- 
out incident.  The  terms  were  announced  to  the 
admiral  by  French  Minister  Guillemin;  the  ad- 
miral accepted.  He  was  hardly  in  position  to 
do  otherwise. 

The  morning  of  December  2,  the  admiral  and 
his  staff  and  certain  officers  of  the  Anglo-French 
secret  police  returned  to  the  Piraeus  and  went 
aboard  the  Provence.     Before  leaving,  Admiral 

473 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Dartige  du  Fournet  called  upon  General  Cal- 
laris  and  explained  that  he  had  had  no  intention 
of  attacking  the  Greeks  or  of  precipitating  con- 
flict. He  asserted,  also,  that  he  had  not  ordered 
the  bombardment  of  an  open  city  filled  with 
women  and  children.  General  Callaris  ex- 
plained, in  reply,  that  his  orders  to  his  men  were 
in  no  circumstances  to  fire  first  upon  the  in- 
vaders, and  that  he  could  only  regret  that  the 
presence  of  armed  troops  upon  neutral  soil  had 
given  an  impression — evidently,  in  view  of  the 
admiral's  declaration,  a  mistaken  one — that  they 
were  there  with  hostile  intent.  The  admiral's 
statement  to  the  newspaper  correspondents  that 
he  would  "take  such  measures  against  the  Gov- 
ernment necessary  to  compel  compliance  with 
his  demands"  was  tactfully  ignored  in  these  for- 
mal amenities. 

After  noon  an  escort  of  Greek  infantry  ac- 
companied the  force  shut  up  in  the  Zappeion, 
with  all  its  material,  to  the  harbor.  The  whole 
length  of  the  road  from  Athens  to  the  Pirasus 
was  guarded  by  the  Greek  sailors,  whom,  so  short 
a  time  before,  the  admiral  had  forced  to  leave 
their  beloved  ships.     As  the  French  and  British 

474; 


GENEHAh  .^Alili.VIL 
Leaving  his  hcadquartf  rs  at  the  French  Srhool,  Saloniki 


ANATHEMA! 

marines  marched  out  of  their  prison,  some  of  the 
men,  less  on  their  dignity  than  the  officers,  waved 
their  hats  and  cheered  the  Greeks.  The  Greeks 
guarding  the  road  grinned  from  ear  to  ear  and 
presented  arms.  Queen  Sophie  took  personal 
charge  of  the  care  of  the  wounded  of  both  sides, 
those  whom  it  was  impossible  to  move  being  left 
in  the  Greek  military  hospital.  I  visited  them 
myself,  and  found  the  Allied  wounded  excellently 
cared  for.  One,  a  French  marine,  Sebastien 
Dale,  said: 

"Our  Greek  comrades  are  very  good  to  us. 
They  take  turns  reading  to  us."  The  "Greek 
comrades"  were  the  Greek  soldiers  whom  the 
French  had  wounded!  Every  day  King  Con- 
stantine  sent  an  aide-de-camp  to  see  that  the  care 
of  the  Allied  wounded  was  the  best  Greece  could 
give. 

Prime  INIinister  Lambros  in  person  saw  to  the 
release  of  the  Italian  troops  that  had  been  sur- 
rounded in  the  Italian  school.  Some  150  British 
were  at  first  missing,  and  the  wildest  rumors  of 
their  murder  and  mutilation  were  current  in  the 
English  colony  of  Athens,  some  of  them  even 
finding  their  way  into  the  British  press  through 

477 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

untrustworthy  Piraeus  reports  sent  by  corre- 
spondents who  had  fled  Athens  in  the  early  hours 
of  the  fighting.  Later  they  made  their  appear- 
ance, however,  from  the  red-hght  district  of 
Athens,  where  they  had  repaired  when  the  armis- 
tice was  declared. 

The  battle  of  Athens  cost  the  Greeks  3 
officers,  2  of  them  colonels,  and  26  soldiers 
dead;  5  officers,  45  soldiers,  4  marines,  and 
7  civilians,  among  whom  were  women  and 
one  child,  wounded.  The  bombardment,  aside 
from  the  fighting,  killed  a  woman  and  a  baby 
and  wounded  a  number  of  men  civilians.  The 
French  lost  2  officers  and  45  marines,  killed; 
and  2  officers  and  96  marines,  wounded.  The 
Allied  dead  were  transferred  in  Greek  army 
ambulances  to  the  Russian  hospital  at  the  Pirseus 
the  moment  the  armistice  was  declared. 

The  arrangements  for  the  Allied  evacuation 
of  Athens  were  completed  during  the  night  of 
December  1.  Before  their  departure  most  of 
the  members  of  the  Anglo-French  secret  police 
quietly  slipped  out  of  town,  and  the  Greeks  for 
the  first  time  in  three  months  regained  control  of 
their  own  telegraphs,  posts,  railways,  and  police. 

478 


ANATHEMA! 

To  the  disinterested  observer  the  admiral's  readi- 
ness to  withdraw  all  of  his  troops  from  Athens, 
even  the  famous  guard  of  the  French  legation 
and  the  hired  gunmen  of  the  Anglo-French  secret 
police,  was  subject  to  one  of  two  interpretations: 
either  all  of  this  occupation  of  Greece  by  foreign 
troops  and  agents  in  foreign  pay  had  never  been 
necessary  at  all,  and  had  been  established  merely 
to  exasperate  the  Greeks;  or  it  was  more  than 
ever  necessary  at  this  particular  juncture,  when 
revolution  had  broken  out  in  the  heart  of  the 
Hellenic  capital.  If  the  admiral  had  ever  had 
any  reason  to  land  marines  "to  assist  in  main- 
taining order,"  he  now  had  tenfold  that  reason 
for  keeping  a  certain  force  in  Athens.  Assum- 
ing that  he  had  not  previously  acted  merely  out 
of  bravado,  to  impose  a  disagreeable  control  upon 
a  friendly  and  neutral  people,  his  action  in  con- 
senting now  to  withdraw  every  Allied  marine 
from  Athens  was  plainly  either  cowardice  or  a 
direct  incitement  and  condoning  of  disorders. 
Cowardice  is  out  of  the  question.  It  is  therefore 
not  only  logical,  but  it  is  the  only  possible  logic, 
that  the  British  and  French  ministers,  in  agree- 
ing to  the  withdrawal  of  the  AHied  troops  at  this 

479 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

moment,  accepted  a  very  large  part  of  the  re- 
sponsibility of  what  might  follow;  and,  indeed, 
invited  precisely  what  did  follow. 

I  have  seen  many  revolutions  in  my  time, 
in  Russia,  Mexico,  Colombia,  Guatemala,  and 
Peru.  Revolutions  as  a  general  rule  are  not 
afternoon  teas.  It  was  amazing  to  me,  therefore, 
to  hear  the  outcry  among  the  Allied  diplomatists 
and  in  the  American  legation  against  the  rapid 
effectiveness  with  which  this  abortive  attempt  at 
revolution  was  put  down.  It  is  true  that  in  com- 
parison with  the  draft  riots  in  New  York  during 
the  Civil  War,  or  with  the  street  fighting  I  saw 
in  Russia  in  1905,  or  even  with  the  accounts  I 
have  had  of  eye-witnesses  of  the  Dublin  affair  two 
years  ago,  this  revolution  in  Athens  was  child's 
play,  very  speedily  and  mercifully  dealt  with. 
I  do  not  know  precisely  how  those  who  protested 
against  its  alleged  cruelty  would  recommend  that 
armed  rebellion  in  the  capital  city  of  a  country 
be  handled ;  probably  by  putting  salt  on  the  tails 
of  the  revolutionists !  The  present  war  has  given 
rise  to  many  shining  examples  of  hypocrisy ;  but 
I  have  yet  to  see  the  parallel  of  the  self -righteous- 
ness with  which  the  Greek  Government  has  been 

480 


ANATHEMA! 

criticized  for  its  prompt,  businesslike  reestablish- 
ment  of  order  in  the  Greek  capital  following  the 
events  of  December  1.  It  is  worthy  of  record, 
however,  that  indignation  over  the  events  of  De- 
cember 2  among  the  Alhes  is  an  afterthought. 
At  the  time  those  who  remained  in  Athens  and 
who  were  not  in  hiding  were  inclined  to  accept 
what  occurred  rather  as  what  might  have  been 
expected  in  the  circumstances. 

To  say  that  feeling  among  the  Greeks  ran  high 
against  those  who  had  fired  upon  their  own  com- 
patriots from  behind  scarcely  expresses  the  ex- 
tent and  depth  of  Greek  sentiment.  The  point 
of  view  of  the  loyal  Greeks  was  simplicity  itself : 
an  hostile,  armed,  foreign  force  had  landed  on 
Greek  territory  and  marched  on  the  ancient  capi- 
tal with  the  declared  purpose  of  seizing  the  arms 
of  the  Hellenic  people.  While  the  Greeks  as  vol- 
unteer soldiers  were  engaged  in  defending  their 
arms  and  their  soil  from  invaders,  a  small  band 
of  conspirators,  plotting  to  overthrow  the  con- 
stitutional Government  of  Greece,  fired  from  the 
shelter  of  darkened  rooms  upon  those  who  in 
the  open  were  fighting  the  soldiers  of  three 
great    powers.     Once,    therefore,    the    invaders 

481 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

were  disposed  of,  every  loyal  Greek  turned  his 
attention  to  settling  accounts  with  these  "assas- 
sins," as  they  called  the  revolutionists. 

It  is  necessary,  also,  in  order  truly  to  appreci- 
ate Greek  feeling  at  this  moment  to  remember 
that  for  six  months  the  pressure  of  the  Allied 
control  officers  had  bound  the  hands  of  Greek 
justice  and  stifled  the  voice  of  Greek  public 
opinion  whenever  either  fell  at  cross  purposes 
with  the  real  or  imaginary  interests  of  the  Allies 
and  their  proteges,  the  Venizelist  revolutionaries. 
The  Venizelist  press  had  been  free  to  rave  at 
the  constitutional  sovereign  of  Greece  in  terms 
of  unmeasured  violence ;  to  accuse  him  of  treach- 
ery, treason,  madness,  and  brutality ;  to  abuse  him 
with  every  epithet  and  attribute  to  him  every 
ignoble  motive,  and  these  attacks  had  been  widely 
reproduced  in  the  press  of  the  Allied  countries 
and  the  United  States.  The  Venizelist  papers 
were  free  to  print  libel,  forgeries,  or  doctored 
matter  purporting  to  be  the  reproduction  of  offi- 
cial documents.  In  all  of  this  "freedom  of  the 
press"  the  Entente  powers  had  protected  the  Ven- 
izelists.  On  the  other  hand,  the  loyal  press  had 
been   muzzled,   intimidated,   and   coerced.     De- 

482 


ANATHEMA ! 

spatches  from  Athens  to  local  newspapers  in  the 
provinces  were  simply  stopped  by  the  officers  of 
the  Allied  telegraphic  control.  Letters,  the  most 
private  kind  of  letters,  'within  Greece,  were 
opened  and  censored  by  Allied  officers  not  to  con- 
ceal any  news  of  vital  military  value,  but  to  ex- 
asperate the  loyal  Greeks,  and  to  serve  the  politi- 
cal ends  of  Venizelos  and  his  followers ;  in  a  word, 
to  help  impose  upon  the  Greeks  a  government 
they  abhorred  and  a  rule  four  fifths  of  them 
would  rather  give  up  their  lives  than  accept. 
Any  drunken  bravo  in  a  respectable  cafe,  annoy- 
ing peaceable  diners,  had  onl}^  to  shout,  "I  belong 
to  the  Anglo-French  secret  police!"  and  the 
diners  must  accept  his  rowdyism  with  what  grace 
they  could.  No  Greek  policeman  dared  to  arrest 
the  offender  for  fear  of  creating  a  diplomatic  in- 
cident. A  deserter  from  the  Greek  army  in  uni- 
form could  walk  about  the  streets  and  preach 
desertion  to  his  former  comrades ;  he  could  not  be 
punished  because  he  was  a  Venizelist  and,  in  the 
words  of  the  French  minister,  "the  Entente 
powers  cannot  remain  indifferent  to  the  lot  of  the 
friends  of  Venizelos." 

These  measures  of  pression  were  so  omnipres- 
483 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ent  that  they  touched  in  some  degree  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  Greece.  The  blockade 
alone,  undeclared,  but  effective  since  September 
30,  was  sufficient  to  exasperate  the  whole  Hellenic 
people  beyond  bearing.  Behind  all  these  meas- 
ures, which  they  considered  tyranny,  they  saw 
the  hand  of  Venizelos  driving  through  to  success 
his  limitless  ambition,  backed  by  the  bayonets 
and  cannon  of  strangers.  It  may  seem  remark- 
able, but  it  is  none  the  less  true,  that  there  was 
comparatively  little  rancor  against  the  French 
and  the  British  for  these  intolerable  conditions  of 
life.  The  Greeks  looked  upon  the  French  and 
British  as  the  victims  of  the  Cretan's  machina- 
tions, and  their  wrath  fell  upon  the  man  whom 
they  held  responsible  for  all  their  trials — Veni- 
zelos himself. 

For  these  reasons,  then,  the  popular  reckoning 
with  the  Venizelists  might  have  been  expected 
to  prove  much  more  severe  than  was  actually 
the  case.  In  the  lower  quarters  of  town,  among 
the  refugees  from  Asia  Minor,  Egypt,  and  Con- 
stantinople, who  had  acted  as  ward  heelers  and 
political  gangmen  for  Venizelos  in  his  campaign, 
I  dare  say  the  death-rate  was  high,  but  the  vic- 

484 


ANATHEMA! 

tims  unwept.  A  great  many  Venizelists  were 
marked  men,  not  because  any  concerted  plan  had 
been  made  to  mark  down  certain  persons  for 
punishment,  but  because  during  the  six  months 
of  Alhed  protection  of  Venizelists,  by  their  own 
insolence,  tyranny  over  their  neighbors,  and 
boasts  of  what  Venizelos  (with  the  assistance  of 
the  Allies)  was  going  to  do  to  the  constitutional 
Government  of  Greece,  many  of  them  had 
marked  themselves  for  drastic  treatment  the  mo- 
ment opportunity  offered. 

The  retirement  of  the  Allied  troops  from 
Athens  and  the  flight  of  the  Anglo-French  secret 
police  furnished  the  opportunity.  No  time  was 
lost  in  seizing  it.  While  the  admiral  and  his  men 
were  still  in  Athens,  early  in  the  morning  of 
December  1,  the  hunt  for  the  consj)irators  began. 
The  houses  from  which  shots  had  been  fired  upon 
the  loj^al  troops  were  isolated  and  the  men  in  them 
kept  there  by  cordons  of  sailors.  The  sailors, 
who  had  lost  a  number  of  comrades  by  shots 
fired  from  windows  while  they  kept  guard  in 
the  streets  during  the  fighting  of  the  day  before, 
had  a  few  scores  to  settle  on  their  own  account. 
They  settled  them. 

485 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  people  of  the  Balkan  States  have  no  light 
hand  in  their  quarrels.  The  Greeks  are  no  ex- 
ception to  this  general  rule,  the  sinister  heritage 
of  centuries  of  Turkish  domination.  But  in  this 
instance  there  was  a  sort  of  terrifying,  yet  child- 
ish, gaiety,  a  startling  light-heartedness  in  the 
way  in  which  not  the  sailors  alone,  but  civilians, 
men  and  even  women,  punished  those  whom  they 
called  traitors.  I  recall  one  sailor,  kneeling  on 
the  doorway  of  the  telegraph  office,  who  con- 
ducted single-handed  a  veritable  battle  with  sev- 
eral men  shooting  into  the  street  from  the  win- 
dows of  the  Venizelist  newspaper,  the  "Ethnos." 

"For  months  they  have  done  whatever  they 
liked,"  he  said  in  English,  between  shots. 
"They  've  blackguarded  our  king  and  betrayed 
our  country  and  run  to  the  Allies  for  protection 
even  when  they  've  been  legally  imprisoned. 
They  have  n't  even  gone  to  Saloniki  to  join  that 
'anti-Bulgarian'  army  they  like  so  much  to  talk 
about, — they  would  have  been  safe  there, — but 
they  have  stuck  around  here  and  made  plots 
and  incited  riots  and  caused  rows  for  which  the 
Allies  have  blamed  us  and  punished  the  whole 
of  Greece.     Yesterday,  when  we  were  fighting 

486 


ANATHEMA ! 

for  the  honor  of  the  nation,  they  shot  us  in  the 
back,  the  dogs!  Now  it  is  their  day  of  reckon- 
ing!" In  his  homely  way  my  sailor  friend  ex- 
pressed everybody's  feeling.  Premier  Lambros 
declared  to  me : 

Now  that  the  external  question  is  in  the  way  of  set- 
tlement, internal  order  will  be  rigorously  imposed.  All 
the  houses  in  which  individuals  barricaded  themselves 
yesterday  and  from  which  they  fired  upon  the  national 
forces  as  well  as  upon  civilians,  will  be  surrounded  and 
the  individuals  who  this  morning,  insist  upon  disturb- 
ing the  public  order,  will  be  taken  into  custody  by  force 
if  necessary  and  held  for  subsequent  trial.  No  peace- 
able individual,  whatever  he  has  done,  need  fear  he  will 
not  receive  Impartial  justice.  Only  armed  resistance 
to  the  reestablishment  of  public  order  endangers  any 
man. 

This  program  was  carried  out  to  the  letter. 
Two  machine-guns  were  trained  on  Venizelos's 
house,  and  some  eighteen  Cretans  who  had  estab- 
lished themselves  in  their  compatriot's  residence 
were  forced  to  surrender.  I  saw  them  taken  to 
prison  under  a  strong  guard.  They  were  not 
mistreated.  Some  of  those  taken  in  other  places 
undoubtedly  were  roughly  handled,  however. 
In  one  instance,  after  several  hours  of  siege  of 
the  top  floor  of  a  hotel  opposite  the  post-office, 
in  the  course  of  which  firing  was  lively  on  both 

487 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

sides,  those  in  the  hotel  were  forced  to  give  up. 
Before  a  guard  of  police  could  protect  them  from 
the  mob,  two  men  were  badly  beaten,  but  still 
able  to  walk  off  unaided  when  finally  rescued. 
The  presses  of  the  Venizelist  newspapers  were 
generally  wrecked.  General  Corakas,  who  for 
weeks  had  been  Venizelos's  "recruiting"  agent  in 
Athens,  and  who  had  directed  the  payment  of 
five  dollars  a  head  to  deserting  soldiers,  was  sum- 
marily treated  by  soldiers  whom  his  agents  had 
approached  without  success.  Mayor  Benakis  of 
Athens  was  reported  to  have  been  cruelly  mis- 
treated. I  saw  him,  as  he  was  being  taken  to 
jail,  walking  jauntily  under  a  careful  guard. 
He  showed  no  signs  then  of  having  been  roughly 
handled,  though  I  believe  that  a  short  time  before, 
in  the  process  of  his  arrest,  the  crowd  had  been 
none  too  tender  with  him. 

During  the  arrests  there  was  a  good  deal  of 
miscellaneous  firing,  mostly  in  the  air,  with  a 
view  to  discourage  any  further  spread  of  the 
revolutionary  attempt.  Cavalry  patrols  in  the 
principal  streets  soon  put  an  end  to  these  demon- 
strations. Two  notorious  Venizelist  workers 
were  taken  into  custody,  and  found  in  possession 

488 


ANATHEMA ! 

of  very  large  sums  of  money,  evidently  intended 
for  some  use  connected  with  the  phi  to  over- 
throw the  Government.  The  total  arrests  on  all 
counts  nmnbered  fewer  than  two  hundred. 

During  the  arrests,  thirteen  loyalist  soldiers, 
six  armed  reservists  and  five  unarmed  civilians 
were  killed  by  shots  from  houses  occupied  by 
Venizelist  revolutionaries.  Of  the  latter,  three 
were  killed  and  two  wounded  in  the  house-to- 
street  fighting.  A  subsequent  search  of  a  num- 
ber of  houses,  at  some  of  which  I  was  personally 
a  witness,  revealed  large  stores  of  ammunition 
gathered  in  the  private  residences  of  Venizelists, 
presumably  for  revolutionary  purposes.  In 
Venizelos's  house  alone  were  found  66  rifles, 
6,000  rounds  of  rifle  ammunition,  49  revolvers 
with  cartridges,  2,500  dynamite  capsules  with  40 
yards  of  fuse,  and  15  hand  grenades. 

Several  employees  of  the  British  secret  police 
made  a  sally  from  the  annex  of  the  legation  in 
an  effort  to  rescue  some  one  under  arrest,  but 
were  quickly  forced  to  seek  refuge  again  in  the 
diplomatic  character  of  the  building.  Two  sec- 
retaries of  the  British  legation  were  arrested, 
but   speedily   released    upon    establishing   their 

489 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  TEOPLE 

identity.  Despite  the  removal  of  the  formidable 
armed  guard  of  French  marines  so  long  main- 
tained at  the  French  legation,  the  legation  and 
its  members  suffered  no  inconvenience.  Certain 
hotels  and  private  houses  were  shot  up  by  those 
who  saw,  or  thought  they  saw,  firing  from  the 
windows.  An  American  business  man  of  stand- 
ing swears  he  saw  firing  from  the  offices  of  the 
French  government  news-agency,  the  "Radio." 
Former  Premier  Zaimis  declared  that  he  saw 
firing  from  the  windows  of  the  British  Eastern 
Telegraph  Company  office.  An  employee  of  the 
Dutch  legation  complained  that  his  house  was  en- 
tered and  searched.  A  Spanish  insurance  com- 
pany alleged  that  its  office  safe  was  robbed  during 
the  troubles.  Outside  of  these  isolated  instances, 
what  disturbance  there  was,  was  among  the 
Greeks.  The  foreign  residents  of  Athens  had 
little  of  which  to  complain.  A  high  official  of 
the  Greek  Government  declared  to  me : 

No  one  suspects  the  admiral  or  the  members  of  the 
British  and  French  legations  of  being  aware  of  this  plot 
to  effect  a  coup  d'etat  in  connexion  with  the  admiral's 
landing.  They  were  undoubtedly  victims  of  a  con- 
spiracy on  the  part  of  their  Venizelist  friends,  which 
explains  why  the  admiral,  consistently  misinformed  by 
the  Venizelists,  refused  to  believe  that  the  Government 

490 


ANATHEMA"! 

seriously  meant  to  persist  in  its  refusal  to  surrender 
the  arms  of  Greece. 

The  idea  of  a  revolution  against  King  Constantino 
in  Athens  is  absurd.  The  efforts  of  not  more  than  a 
couple  of  hundred  conspirators  to  overthrow  the  con- 
stitutional government  only  resulted  in  enraging  the 
entire  populace  against  the  perpetrators,  thus  causing 
the  regrctable  incidents  of  this  morning. 

By  evening  Athens  was  again  normal.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  to  guess  that  a  foreign 
invasion  and  an  unsuccessful  revolution  had  both 
taken  place  within  the  space  of  thirty-six  hours. 

In  the  Piraeus,  however,  there  was  less  calm. 
Certain  Venizelists  who  had  the  ear  of  Admiral 
Dartige  du  Fournet  had  rushed  off  to  the 
Provence  and  filled  the  credulous  sailor  with  a 
tale  that  the  Greek  army  was  marching  against 
the  French  fleet.  Just  how  the  army  was  to  ad- 
vance across  the  waters  of  Keratsina  Bay  was 
not  shown,  but  the  admiral  hastily  landed  a  force 
in  the  port  during  the  night  of  December  2,  oc- 
cupied and  fortified  the  city  hall,  and  sent  an 
advance  guard,  under  the  Venizelist  terrorist 
Paul  Ghyparis,  to  seize  and  entrench  Castello 
Hill,  between  Athens  and  the  PircTUS.  The 
panic  into  which  the  British  and  French  authori- 

491 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ties  were  thrown  by  these  unfounded  rumors  of 
an  attack  the  very  nature  of  which  was  absurd, 
constitutes  a  rather  silly,  but  convincing,  proof 
of  the  power  of  the  Venizelists  over  the  Allied 
diplomatic  and  naval  officers.  Captain  de 
Roquefeuille,  the  French  naval  attache  and  head 
of  the  French  secret  police,  was  in  so  ridiculous 
a  panic  that  he  told  one  of  his  colleagues  that  the 
blood  of  his  wife  and  babies  would  be  upon  his 
head  if  he  permitted  them  to  remain  in  Athens, 
where  they  were  certain  to  be  murdered.  One  of 
the  secretaries  of  the  British  legation  implored 
the  American  minister  to  hoist  the  American  flag 
over  his  private  residence,  to  protect  it.  Several 
Allied  diplomatists  sent  wives  and  children  to  the 
American  legation  for  safety.  Even  the  Ameri- 
can minister  himself,  always  in  intimate  touch 
with  the  Venizelists,  was  so  moved  by  their  fright 
that  he  urged  me  to  take  my  wife  to  the  Piraeus 
where  she  might  be  out  of  danger.  From  the 
pulpit  of  the  English  church,  the  advice  was 
given  to  all  British  nationals  to  flee  Athens  at 
once.  Some  of  the  most  supercilious  members  of 
the  British  and  French  colonies,  previously,  under 
the  guns  of  their  fleet,  insolently  contemptuous 

492 


ANATHEMA ! 

of  the  Greeks,  scurried  out  of  town  as  secretly 
as  possible,  with  a  httle,  hastily-packed  hand 
luggage. 

By  evening  the  whole  ugly  exhibition  of  pol- 
troonery was  at  its  height.  People  paid  fabulous 
prices  for  cabs  to  take  them  to  the  Pirseus.  To 
add  to  the  confusion,  the  report  was  confirmed 
that,  as  soon  as  the  major  part  of  the  Allied  na- 
tionals had  left  the  city,  the  French  admiral  pro- 
posed to  bombard  it  without  further  warning. 
Yet  there  was  not  the  slightest  reason  for  any 
of  this  display  of  fear,  except  mob  panic.  Life 
in  Athens  took  its  usual  course.  Cafes  and  mov- 
ing-picture theaters  were  filled.  The  Italian 
minister  and  his  staff,  in  sharp  contrast  with  liis 
less  cool-headed  colleagues,  went  about  his  usual 
pursuits  and  advised  his  nationals  that  a  flight 
from  Athens  would  be  sheer  folly. 

All  of  this  panic  was  the  work  of  the  defeated 
Venizelists,  themselves  in  an  agony  of  fear  at  the 
prospect  of  being  tried  and  punished  for  their 
attempted  revolution.  So  long  immune  from  the 
processes  of  the  law,  thanks  to  the  protection 
that  they  had  enjoyed  from  the  British  and 
French  ministers,  they  could  not  pay  with  cour- 

493 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

age  the  price  of  their  failure  to  overturn  the  con- 
stitutional government.  It  was  their  panic 
which,  communicated  to  the  British  and  French 
nationals,  failed  only  by  a  narrow  margin  of  fix- 
ing upon  a  French  officer  the  shame  of  again 
bombarding,  this  time  in  cold  blood  and  without 
excuse,  an  open  city  filled  with  w^omen  and  chil- 
dren. Only  King  Constantine's  prompt  action 
in  sending  one  of  his  officers  of  highest  rank 
aboard  the  Provence  to  calm  the  French  admiral 
avoided  disaster. 

Meanwhile,  to  care  for  their  nationals  who  had 
fled  the  capital,  the  British  and  French  ministers 
requisitioned  the  Greek  transatlantic  steamer, 
Ki7ig  Constantine,  aboard  which  all  were  quar- 
tered. They  found  themselves  in  peculiar  case, 
as  did,  indeed,  their  diplomatic  representatives. 
Should  they  return  to  Athens,  it  would  be  a  tacit 
admission  that  they  had  been  needlessly  afraid. 
Few  were  willing  to  do  this  openly.  In  order, 
therefore,  to  justify  their  panic,  it  became  neces- 
sary to  assume  the  existence  of  real  grounds  for 
flight  from  the  Greek  capital.  Every  extrava- 
gant story  was  therefore  spread  and  enlarged 
upon;  the  events  of  December  1  and  2  took  on 

494 


ANATHEMA ! 

a  fantastic  character,  amusing  to  those  who  had 
been  abroad  during  both  days;  talk  of  murder, 
atrocity,  and  deep  plottings  that  would  do  honor 
to  the  writer  of  a  moving-picture  scenario  were 
recounted  in  whispers — and  believed.  These 
stories  spread  to  the  British  and  French  press, 
and  in  London,  Paris,  and  the  United  States  the 
impression  was  generally  current  that  Athens 
had  witnessed  and  was  still  witnessing  something 
like  a  Boxer  siege  of  Pekin.  ^leanwhile,  those 
of  us  who  remained  in  the  Greek  capital  went 
about  our  business  as  dully  as  in  times  of  world 
peace. 

Against  this  wanton  exaggeration  and  falsifi- 
cation of  what  had  actually  occurred.  Premier 
Lambros  protested  to  the  foreign  press. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  certain  instances 
which  we  all  regret  had,  after  all,  their  origin  in  the 
rage  of  the  people  against  those  who,  while  Greece  was 
defending  herself,  sought  to  stab  her  in  the  back  by 
an  attempt  at  revolution  conceived,  prepared  and  pro- 
tected by  the  paid  agents  of  the  Entente  Powers.  The 
excesses,  of  which  thei'e  were  really  few,  were  of  course 
unjustifiable;  but  they  were  due  to  the  exasperation  of 
the  populace  and  the  army,  which  is  merely  the  Greek 
people,  not  unatural  under  the  circumstances.  TJiose 
who  suffered  were  principally  those  against  whom 
proof  existed  of  a  seditious  plot.      When  the  plot  be- 

495 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

came  generally  known,  public  sentiment  was  inflamed, 
as  is  the  case  in  any  country.  The  Government  could 
scarcely  foresee  these  circumstances ;  but  the  moment 
order  was  restored,  took  steps  to  arrest  and  punish 
those  guilty  of  any  excess. 

Mr.  Droppers,  the  American  minister,  affected 
by  the  stories  of  the  abuses  which  his  Venizelist 
friends  brought  to  him,  undertook  to  voice  a  pro- 
test to  the  Greek  Government  against  the  treat- 
mentof  the  Venizelists.  To  this  protest  Foreign 
Minister  Zalocostas  formally  replied: 

The  Government  is  decided  to  punish  every  person 
guilty  of  having  committed  illegal  acts  or  exceeded  in- 
structions, and  a  severe  investigation  will  be  begun  to 
this  end  so  soon  as  acts  of  this  nature  are  brought  to 
the  attention  of  the  Government. 

In  this  connexion  the  Foreign  Minister  considers 
it  his  duty  to  recall  to  your  attention  that  by  his  note 
of  November  28,  he  warned  the  neutral  Powers  of  the 
tragic  position  in  which  the  Greek  nation  had  been 
placed  as  a  result  of  the  measures  taken  against  Greece, 
and  of  the  consequences  which  the  French  admiral's 
insistence  upon  obtaining  the  Greek  war  material  might 
well  have. 

King  Constantine  also  telegraphed  a  full  and 
very  just  account  of  the  events  of  December  1 
and  2  to  Prince  George  in  Paris,  for  communi- 
cation to  Premier  Briand,  as  well  as  to  King 
George  of  England  and  the  Czar  of  Russia.     At 

496 


ANATHEMA ! 

the  same  time  he  asked  these  heads  of  state  to  see 
that  Greece  had  at  least  fair  play  in  the  Allied 
press.     His  appeal  was  without  avail. 

iSIatters  were  still  undecided  when,  on  Decem- 
ber 7,  King  Constantine  told  me  that  he  was  per- 
fectly ready  to  meet  the  Allied  ministers  half- 
way in  any  arrangement  they  proposed;  that  he 
would  accept  disarmament,  since  the  disarma- 
ment of  the  Greek  army  was  virtually  a  fact 
already,  but  that  the  arms  must  remain  in  the 
country;  that  he  would  accept  any  Allied  mili- 
tary control  thought  necessary  to  the  protection 
of  General  Sarrail's  flanks,  but  that  the  control 
must  be  loyally  maintained  for  military  purposes 
and  not  with  the  aim  of  conducting  or  favoring 
a  rebellion  against  the  constitutional  government 
of  Greece.  He  added  that,  even  if  the  Alhes 
\\ere  to  require  that  all  the  Venizelists  arrested 
for  comj^licity  with  the  revolutionary  plot  were 
released,  he  was  prepared  to  use  what  influence 
he  might  have  to  obtain  that,  also;  but  on  condi- 
tion that  the  released  Venizelists  go  to  Saloniki 
and  fight  the  Bulgarians,  as  they  professed  to  de- 
sire to  do,  not  remain  in  Athens  to  fight  Greeks 
and  promote  civil  war  in  a  country  at  peace. 

497 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

This  view  of  the  King  of  the  Hellenes  was  con- 
veyed to  the  British  and  French  ministers.  Their 
reply  was  a  formal  declaration  on  December  8 
of  a  blockade  of  the  ports  of  Greece  not  under 
Venizelist  control.  No  reason  was  given  for  the 
blockade,  and  no  conditions  were  named  compli- 
ance with  which  could  secure  the  lifting  of  this 
measure  of  stai*vation. 

At  the  same  time  that  this  announcement  was 
made  Admiral  Dartige  du  Fournet  lined  up  his 
squadron  for  a  bombardment  of  Athens.  Cap- 
tain Joubert,  of  the  French  navy,  privately 
warned  a  number  of  people  to  leave  the  city  as  a 
bombardment  was  imminent,  but  no  formal  no- 
tice was  given.  Only  the  prompt  action  of  the 
Italian  minister.  Count  Bosdari,  succeeded  in 
once  more  avoiding  a  catastrophe.  The  Ameri- 
can minister  is  my  authority  for  the  statement 
that  this  was  the  third  time  within  the  week  that 
the  French  admiral  had  been  on  the  point  of 
bombarding  the  Greek  capital,  each  time  without 
previous  warning. 

As  the  British  naval  authorities  at  Malta  and 
Gibraltar  had  so  held  the  supplies  for  Greece  in 
check  since  Sejitember  30  that  the  average  Greek 

498 


anathe:\ia  ! 

was  at  some  pains  to  keep  bodj^  and  soul  together, 
the  formal  declaration  of  a  blockade  came  as 
nothing  new.  Since  November  30  not  a  single 
ship  had  been  permitted  to  make  or  leave  the  port 
of  the  Piraeus.  The  Greeks  were  already  almost 
desperate  for  food  when  this  new  oppressive 
measure  went  into  effect.  It  was  accompanied 
by  a  formal  order  to  all  Entente  nationals  to 
quit  Greece  by  December  10.  Even  those  who 
wished  to  remain,  as,  for  example,  the  English 
governess  of  Princess  Ahce's  children,  were 
sternly  ordered  to  embark  aboard  the  King 
Constantine  without  delay.  So  needless  and  ab- 
surd was  this  order  that  it  was  difficult  for  the 
impartial  observer  not  to  conclude  that  the  step 
was  taken  rather  as  justification  of  the  undigni- 
fied flight  of  British  and  French  nationals  a  week 
previously,  than  for  any  good  reason  of  national 
policy. 

Such,  at  least,  appeared  to  be  the  view  of  tlie 
Russian  and  Italian  ministers,  who  refused  to 
order  their  colonies  to  embark  and  openly  pro- 
nounced the  whole  business  a  silly  comedy.  The 
Greek  Government,  also,  formally  protested  to 
the  United  States,  Holland,  and  Spain— the  neu- 

499 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

tral  nations  having  diplomatic  representatives  in 
Greece — not  only  against  the  inhumanity  of  the 
measure  itself,  but  against  its  imposition  without 
any  assigned  reason,  or  any  conditions  stated  for 
its  termination.     The  document  read  as  follows: 

Greece,  at  peace  with  the  Entente  Powers,  never 
ceasing  to  give  them  the  most  extraordinary  proofs  of 
her  firm  desire  to  maintain  with  them  the  reciprocal 
ties  of  friendship,  sees  with  painful  surprise  these  same 
Powers  have  recourse  to  a  measure  toward  Greece  so 
manifestly  contrary  to  international  law  and  the  prin- 
ciples of  international  justice  and  liberty.  While 
awaiting  explanations  of  the  character  and  motives  of 
the  blockade,  the  Government  cannot  but  formulate 
the  liveliest  and  most  legitmate  protest  against  the 
application  of  such  a  measure  to  a  friendly,  neutral 
people. 

At  the  same  time  King  Constantine  had  long 
conferences  with  the  British  and  Russian  minis- 
ters in  which  he  made  clear  to  them  the  position 
he  had  already  stated  to  me  and  offered  to  accept 
any  arrangement  on  a  military,  not  a  political, 
basis.  He  declared  categorically  that  he  had  no 
more  intention  of  attacking  or  declaring  war  on 
the  Allies  now  than  when  he  had  given  the  same 
assurance  to  Lord  Kitchener,  and  that  no  act  of 
his  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  Greek  armies 
had  any  other  purpose  than  the  legitimate  defense 

500 


ANATHEMA ! 

of  Hellas  from  invasion  by  the  Venizclists  from 
the  north,  or  by  the  Alhes  themselves  from  the 
sea.  He  said  further  that  even  if  the  Entente's 
chosen  policy  of  starving  the  Greek  nation  into 
submission  were  to  force  hmi  to  try  to  open  up 
communications  with  the  Central  empires,  in  or- 
der to  secure  the  food  his  people  required,  he 
would  not  attack  Sarrail's  position  at  Saloniki, 
and  as  earnest  of  this,  he  declared  his  readiness 
to  order  the  continuance  of  the  southward  ship- 
ment of  his  troops  from  Thessaly,  suspended  on 
December  1,  so  that  even  any  remote  possibility 
of  danger  to  Sarrail's  flank  might  be  removed. 
With  this  candid  declaration  King  Constantine 
hoped  to  alter  the  suspicious  attitude  of  Great 
Britain  and  France  and  to  reestablish  a  frank 
relationship  based  on  a  better  understanding  of 
the  sentiments  animating  the  Greeks. 

Count  Bosdari  was  also  exceedingh^  active  to 
this  end.  His  view  was  that  the  Greek  mon- 
arch's proposal  satisfied  every  mihtary  desire  of 
the  Allies.  He  regarded  Venizelos  as  a  handi- 
cap rather  than  an  asset  to  the  Entente  and 
pointed  out  to  his  colleagues  that  the  admiral's 
landing  on  December  1  and  the  abortive  Venize- 

501 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  TEOPLE 

list  revolution  of  December  2  had  cost  the  Allies 
and  their  protege,  Venizelos,  every  possible  hope 
of  securing  more  "volunteers"  from  among  the 
Greeks.     As  he  put  it,  succinctly: 

"You  cannot  expect  the  Greeks  to  fight  against 
us  one  day,  and  with  us  the  next." 

But  it  was  not  that  they  had  fought  the  Allied 
marines  that  affected  Greek  feeling  at  this  mo- 
ment. The  Greeks  bore  no  rancor  for  the  in- 
vasion and  took  extraordinarily  httle  pride  in 
their  successful  resistance  to  the  armed  forces  of 
three  great  powers.  Ordinarily  no  more  modest 
about  their  exploits  than  in  the  days  of  Homer, 
one  might  have  expected  cries  of  victoiy  and  a 
certain  swagger.  There  was  none  of  that.  The 
tone  of  the  press  was  rather  apologetic : 

It  should  now  be  clear  to  the  Entente  Powers  that 
the  Greek  people  support  their  sovereign.  It  is  a  pity 
it  took  bloodshed  to  establish  this  fact,  but  it  was 
worth  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  both  sides  if  it  is 
now  clear  that  no  fundamental  hostility  to  the  Allies 
but  merely  patriotism  and  loyalty  to  our  soldier  king 
lay  at  the  bottom  of  our  resistance. 

Unhappily,  though  it  seems  incredible  that  the 
events  of  December  1  should  not  have  convinced 
even  M.  Guillemin  of  the  fatuousness  of  his  policy 

502 


ANATHEMA ! 

of  supporting  Venizelos,  the  British  and  French 
ministers  seemed  to  have  learned  nothing  from 
what  occurred.  Certainly,  with  their  American 
colleague,  they  were  virtually  alone  in  their  con- 
tention that  Venizelos  still  represented  the  will 
of  the  majority  of  the  Greek  people.  Almost 
every  Venizelist  who  remained  in  Athens  and  who 
had  clung  to  the  Cretan  in  the  honest  behef  that 
Venizelos  represented  real  Greek  opinion,  ad- 
mitted error  quite  frankly.  It  required  the  Lon- 
don "Times"  to  put  the  opposite  case  in  a  few 
words.  Its  correspondent  in  Athens,  himself 
previously  a  Venizelist,  followed  the  events  of 
December  1  and  2  by  a  sober  review  of  the  actual 
situation  as  then  revealed.  He  stated  candidly 
that  he,  for  one,  was  convinced  that  Venizelos  no 
longer  had  the  least  chance  of  leading  the  Hel- 
lenic people.  The  "Times"  published  his  article 
under  a  caption  intimating  that  the  correspondent 
had  been  forced  to  write  it  under  duress,  and  then 
discharged  him  as  correspondent  on  the  ground 
that  his  dispatch  was  not  consonant  with  the 
policy  of  his  Britannic  Majesty's  Government. 
This,  indeed,  appeared  to  be  the  course  settled 
upon   in   London  and   Paris   by   both   govern- 

503 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ments.  The  Greek  people  had  demonstrated 
that  they  would  have  none  of  Venizelos.  Well 
— "the  people  be  damned!"  The  Anglo-French 
secret  police  had  fled  Athens,  but  the  directors 
had  no  intention  of  abandoning  the  huge  sums 
they  had  previously  dispensed  or  of  exchanging 
the  joys  of  a  care-free  life  for  the  humdrum 
existence  of  the  trenches.  They,  therefore, 
seized  the  island  of  Syra,  whence  they  intended 
to  continue  their  efforts  to  force  Venizelos  on 
the  Greeks  at  any  cost.  *'Le  Miroir,"  a  French 
magazine,  recounts *the  taking  of  this  island: 

A  machine  gun  belonging  to  the  British  landing 
force,  was  pointed  down  the  principal  street ;  every  at- 
tempt at  resistance  was  forestalled,  thanks  to  these 
rapid  measures.-^ 

One  after  another  the  islands  of  Zante,  Naxos, 
Ithaca,  Tinos,  Paros,  Kea,  and  Santorin  were 
similarly  seized  by  AUied  naval  detachments,  the 
constitutional  officials  arrested,  leading  citizens 
loyal  to  the  constitution  imprisoned,  and  Venize- 
list  office  holders  established  in  a  control  of  the 
islands  maintained  by  Alhed  cannon.  An  official 
account  of  the  occupation  of  Zante  reads : 

i"Le  Miroir,"  December  31,  1916. 
504 


ANATHEMA ! 

Detachments  of  French  marines  have  dcharkcd  at 
Zante  and,  under  threat  of  bombardment,  occupied  dif- 
ferent buildings  and  left  a  garrison. 

The  French  naval  officer  occuping  Kea,  posted 
a  proclamation  stating: 

As  a  result  of  tlie  ambush  of  Athens,  in  the  course 
of  which  Allied  sailors  Avere  treacherously  shot  with- 
out warning  by  the  Greeks,  the  French  Government  as 
a  first  measure  of  pression,  has  declared  a  blockade  of 
Greece.  .  .  .  The  application  of  this  measure,  dictated 
by  the  murderers  of  Athens  themselves,  will  enormously 
strike  at  Greece  from  a  material,  commercial  and  indus- 
trial point  of  view.  .  .  .  From  a  feeling  of  justice,  the 
French  admiral  regrets  that  the  innocent  must  suffer 
the  same  as  the  guilty.  .  .  . 

On  the  whole,  the  proclamation  reads  quite  like 
one  of  those  the  Germans  posted  in  Belgium 
every  few  days  in  the  early  part  of  the  war. 

At  the  occupation  of  each  of  these  islands  in 
this  summary  way,  the  island's  "adhesion  to  the 
national  movement,"  was  widely  heralded  in  the 
British  and  French  press  and  the  claim  set  up  in 
France  and  England  that,  because  of  these  rapid 
accessions  to  the  cause  of  the  Cretan  among  the 
people  of  the  Greek  islands,  Venizelos's  "pro- 
visional government"  should  be  recognized  as  the 
legal  government  of  Greece.  As  the  rigor  of  the 
blockade  increased  in  the  islands,  always  less  sup- 

505 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

plied  with  food  than  the  mainland,  French  and 
British  boats  loaded  with  breadstuffs  would  ap- 
pear off  one  after  another  of  those  whose  inhabit- 
ants were  literally  starving  and  offered  to  supply 
the  people  with  all  the  food  they  desired  if  they 
AN^ould  but  desert  allegiance  to  the  constitutional 
government  of  Greece  and  join  the  Venizelist 
revolution.  The  Allied  blockade  of  Greece  made 
it  impossible  for  the  constitutional  government  to 
send  relief  to  the  islands  thus  starved  into  sub- 
mission and  the  inhabitants  knew  it ;  but  even  so, 
in  many  instances  the  islanders  replied : 

"We  have  no  need  of  food  at  the  price  of  our 
loyalty  to  our  king." 

Meanwhile,  King  Constantine,  daily  in  touch 
with  the  sufferings  of  his  people,  was  doing  what 
he  could  to  reach  some  sort  of  an  understanding 
with  the  Allied  powers.  On  December  12,  the 
Greek  Government,  still  in  ignorance  of  the  rea- 
son for  the  blockade,  sent  the  Alhed  ministers  a 
note  in  these  terms : 

The  Government,  supposing  that  the  measures  of 
pression  exercised  by  the  Powers  are  a  consequence  of 
the  events  of  December  1,  hereby  proposes  that  a  mixed 
commission  of  enquiry  be  named,  in  conformance  with 
the  provisions  of  The  Hague  convention,  to  establish 

506 


ANATHEMA ! 

the  responsibility  for  the  encounters  provoked  between 
the  sailors  of  the  Allied  fleet  and  the  troops  of  the 
kingdom.  In  case  this  commission  should  declare  that 
the  royal  government  is  rcs])onsible  for  the  events  in 
question,  the  Government  is  ready  in  advance  to  give 
the  Powers  any  moral  reparation  whatsoever^  not  af- 
fecting its  honor,  which  the  mixed  commission  may  fix. 

This  proposal,  so  in  keeping  with  the  very  in- 
ternational principles  for  which  the  powers  ad- 
dressed are  waging  a  world  war,  was  not  even 
accorded  the  recognition  of  a  reply.  To  the 
constitutional  government's  protest  that  the 
Allies  were  actively  aiding  the  revolutionists  in 
the  Greek  islands  and  on  Euboea  "by  terroriza- 
tion  to  propagate  sedition  among  the  islanders, 
despite  their  sentiments  of  loyalty  and  devotion 
to  the  legal  government,"  no  reply  was  vouch- 
safed. The  only  reply  of  any  kind  to  the  repre- 
sentations of  King  Constantine  and  his  Govern- 
ment was  an  ultimatum,  delivered  December  14, 
and  reading  in  its  essential  parts : 

The  recent  events  in  Athens  have  proved  in  an  in- 
disputable way  that  neither  the  king  nor  the  Hellenic 
Government  exercises  sufficient  authority  over  the 
Hellenic  army  to  keep  it  from  constituting  a  menace 
to  the  peace  and  security  of  the  Allied  troops  in  Mace- 
donia. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  Allied  governments 
507 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

are  obliged,  with  a  view  to  assuring  their  forces  against 
an  attack,  to  demand  the  immediate  removal  of  the 
troops  enumerated  in  the  technical  note  attached. 
These  removals  must  begin  within  24  hours  and  be 
completed  as  quickly  as  possible.  On  the  other  hand, 
all  movements  of  troops  toward  the  north  must  imme- 
diately cease. 

In  case  the  Hellenic  Government  should  not  accept 
these  exigencies,  the  Allies  will  consider  that  such  an 
attitude  constitutes  an  act  of  hostility  toward  them. 

The  undersigned  ministers  have  received  orders  to 
quit  Greece  with  the  personnel  of  their  legations  if,  at 
the  expiration  of  24<  hours  from  the  delivery  of  the  pres- 
ent note,  they  have  not  received  the  pure  and  simple  ac- 
ceptance of  the  royal  government. 

The  blockade  of  the  Greek  coasts  will  continue  until 
the  Hellenic  Government  shall  have  given  full  repara- 
tion for  the  last  attack,  made  without  provocation  by 
the  Greek  troops  on  the  Allied  troops  at  Athens,  and 
until  sufficient  guarantees  for  the  future  have  been 
furnished. 

This  astounding  document,  coolly  declaring 
that  the  landing  of  an  armed  force  upon  neutral 
soil  and  an  advance  of  that  force  with  declared 
hostile  intent  upon  the  capital  of  a  country  at 
peace,  furnished  no  provocation  to  resistance,  is 
remarkable  for  many  reasons.  First  it  betrays 
the  line  that  the  British  and  French  governments 
had  decided  to  adopt  toward  the  events  of  De- 
cember 1,  namely,  that  King  Constantine's 
meager  force  still  under  arms  constituted  a  press- 

508 


ANATHEMA! 

ing  danger  to  Sarrail's  armies,  and  that  what- 
ever measures  of  pression  might  be  taken  toward 
Greece  were,  consequently,  of  mihtary  necessity. 
Venizelos  himself,  on  December  30,^  placed  the 
strength  of  the  constitutional  army  of  Greece  at 
between  30,000  and  40,000  men,  not  bayonets. 
Sarrail  at  this  time  had  over  250,000  men  at 
Saloniki,  protected  from  any  possibility  of  a 
Greek  attack  by  a  range  of  mountains  passable 
only  at  two  readily  guarded  points.  Pretense 
that  the  AUied  Orient  armies  were  in  any  danger 
was,  therefore,  either  an  amazing  confession  of 
the  weakness  of  the  INIacedonian  forces  or  a  trans- 
parent diplomatic  subterfuge.  While  the  Rus- 
sian and  Italian  ministers  had  signed  this  note, 
the  former,  later  and  very  reluctantly,  withdrew 
from  Athens  aboard  the  Ahassieli,  and  the  latter 
refused  to  leave  the  Greek  capital  at  all,  declar- 
ing that  he  was  representing  his  government,  not 
acting  for  a  moving-picture  film. 

"We  either  have  diplomatic  relations  with  the 
Greek  Government,"  he  said,  "or  we  break  them 
off.  If  we  break  off  relations  we  leave  Greece 
entirely.     If  we  do  not,  there  is  no  sense   in 

1  See  Appendix  6". 

509 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

negotiating  over  a  distance  of  twenty  miles." 
The  Greek  reply  to  the  ultimatum  was  in  full 
accord  with  the  assurances  King  Constantine  had 
already  given  the  British  and  Russian  ministers 
that  he  was  ready  to  meet  the  Allies  more  than 
half-way  in  reaching  a  frank  understanding. 
The  fact  that  the  ultimatum  required  a  blind  ac- 
ceptance of  any  reparation  or  guarantees  the 
Allies  might  demand,  left  the  very  profound  im- 
pression on  the  Hellenic  people  in  general  that 
the  Austrian  demands  made  of  the  Serbs  in  July, 
1914,  were  mere  child's  play  compared  to  this 
rough-shod  method  of  handling  international 
affairs.  There  was  an  unquestionable  opposition 
to  King  Constantine's  acceptance  of  the  terms  of 
the  ultimatum,  at  least  until  the  nature  of  the 
"reparations  and  guarantees"  were  defined.  A 
party  of  growing  importance  in  Greece  main- 
tained that  Great  Britain  and  France  were  try- 
ing to  force  Greece  into  war  against  the  Allies 
and  foresaw  that  sooner  or  later,  either  by  the 
continuation  of  the  blockade  or  by  new  demands 
impossible  of  fulfilment,  the  British  and  French 
chancelleries  would  succeed  in  this  purpose. 
They  therefore  counseled  the  king  to  put  him- 

510 


ANATHEMA ! 

self  at  the  head  of  the  Greek  people  and  for- 
tify himself  in  the  fastnesses  of  Thessaly,  where 
he  could  probably  resist  the  attack  of  the  Allies 
for  years.  The  "Chronos,"  an  Athenian  daily 
of  popular  circulation,  put  the  matter  squarely ; 

"War  is  no  worse  than  starvation,"  it  declared. 
"If  the  halter  around  our  necks  is  tightened  any 
further,  let  us  have  war  and  be  done  with  this 
business." 

It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to  read  the 
opening  phrase  of  the  Allied  ultimatum  that 
"neither  the  king  nor  the  Hellenic  Government 
exercises  sufficient  authority  over  the  Hellenic 
army  to  keep  it  from  constituting  a  menace  to  the 
peace  and  security  of  the  Allied  troops  in  INIace 
donia."  Undoubtedly  the  Allies  had  done  all 
they  could  since  June  21  to  undermine  King  Con- 
stantine's  authority  over  his  army  and  to  destroy 
the  discipline  of  the  Hellenic  military  and  naval 
forces.  But  their  statement,  in  this  instance, 
was  still  premature.  Had  it  not  been  for  tlie 
iron  authority  of  the  commander-in-chief  of  the 
Greek  forces  on  December  1,  not  a  man  of  Ad- 
miral Dartige  du  Fournet's  landing  force  would 
have  returned  to  the  Allied  fleet,  and  the  admiral 

511 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

himself  would  have  been  kept  a  prisoner.     On 
the  presentation  of  this  latest  ultimatum,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  immense  influence  in  behalf  of 
the  Allies  that  King  Constantine  exercised  and 
his  complete  moral  ascendency  over  the  Hellenic 
army  and  the  Hellenic  people,  the  result  of  the 
ultimatum  would  not  have  been  further  conces- 
sions to  the  Entente,  but  the  creation  of  a  new 
and  exceedingly  difficult  Allied  front  in  Greece. 
The  British  and  French  governments  had  Con- 
stantine I,  not  Venizelos  or  their  diplomatists,  to 
thank  for  peace  in  Greece  instead  of  a  new  con- 
flict, which  would  have  dragged  out  the  European 
War  to  still  greater  length  and,  it  may  be,  have 
made  a  German  victory  possible. 

The  Greek  Government's  acceptance  of  the 
ultimatum,  wholly  the  work  of  King  Constantine, 
was  as  "pure  and  simple"  as  any  one  not  try- 
ing merely  to  pick  a  quarrel  could  require. 

Desirous  of  giving  once  more  a  manifest  proof  of  the 
sincere  sentiments  of  friendship  by  which  it  has  never 
ceased  to  be  animated  toward  the  Entente,  the  royal 
government  accepts  the  demands  contained  therein. 

At  the  same  time,  however,  Foreign  Minister 
Zalacostas  expressed  the  hope  that: 

512 


ANATHEMA! 

The  Powers  will  reconsider  their  declaration  to  con- 
tinue the  blockade  of  the  Greek  coasts  and  islands, 
which  strains  the  relations  between  the  Allies  and 
Greece  and  makes  an  impression  upon  public  opinion, 
and  will  be  persuaded  that  the  best  guarantee  against 
any  future  misunderstandings  lies  in  the  firm  and  very 
sincere  desire  of  the  Greek  Government  and  the  Greek 
people  to  see  confirmed  as  quickly  as  possible  their 
excellent  traditional  relations  toward  the  four  Powers, 
and  a  close  friendship  based  upon  reciprocal  confi- 
dence. 

While  the  Greek  reply  was  on  its  way  aboard 
the  Latouche-Treville,  Vice-admiral  de  Marilave, 
who  had  replaced  Dartige  du  Fournet  in  com- 
mand of  the  Allied  squadron,  cleared  his  decks 
for"  bombardment  and  notified  the  population  of 
the  Piraeus  "to  close  their  doors  and  windows  and 
seek  refuge  from  every  kind  of  projectile  after 
4  o'clock  p.  M." 

"I  deny,"  Admiral  de  Marilave  added,  "all  re- 
sponsibility for  the  measures  to  which  I  may  be 
compelled  to  have  recourse." 

The  population  of  Athens  was  not  notified  of 
this  intention  to  bombard.  No  time  was  given 
in  which  to  get  the  women,  children,  and  other 
noncombatants  out  of  the  city.  Only  the  ar- 
rival of  Minister  Zalocostas,  with  the  Greek  re- 
ply to  the  ultimatum,  prevented  the  destruction 
.    513 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

of  the  ancient  city,  with  its  priceless  monuments. 

The  Hellenic  government  immediately  set 
about  the  transfer  of  troops  demanded  by  Gen- 
eral Sarrail.  The  examination  of  those  arrested 
on  charge  of  complicity  in  the  abortive  revolution 
of  December  1  and  2  moved  as  rapidly  as  the 
courts  could  act,  King  Constantine  urging  the 
judges  to  dispose  of  the  business  with  all  possi- 
ble dispatch.  In  three  weeks  268  persons  were 
brought  to  court;  91  were  released  within  a  fort- 
night; 118  were  still  to  be  examined;  57  were 
convicted  on  suspended  sentence,  and  2  were  un- 
der indictment.  Nevertheless,  the  Allied  minis- 
ters were  greatly  exercised  over  this  handling  of 
the  sedition  cases.  Doubtless,  they  felt  a  cer- 
tain sense  of  responsibility  in  the  matter.  Cer- 
tainly those  Venizelists  who  had  remained  true 
to  the  cause  of  the  Cretan  in  Athens  left  them 
no  peace  with  tales  of  the  brutal  treatment  of  the 
Venizelist  prisoners.  As  a  result,  not  only  the 
British  and  French  but  the  American  minister 
visited  the  jails,  only  to  find  the  Venizelists,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Droppers,  "as  comfortable  as 
could  be  expected  and  humanly  treated." 

In  view  not  only  of  the  loyalty  with  which  the 
514 


ANATHEMA ! 

Allied  demands  were  being  executed,  but  of  the 
rapidity  and  fairness  with  which  the  revolution- 
ists responsible  for  the  bloodshed  of  December. 2 
were  being  tried,  the  Hellenic  Government  was 
at  loss  to  understand  the  continued  activity  of  the 
Anglo-French  secret  police  in  spreading  dis- 
affection throughout  the  Greek  islands.  The  in- 
ternal complications  created  by  these  manoeuvers 
were  set  forth  in  a  formal  note  on  December  18, 
inviting  the  Allies  to  assist  the  Hellenic  Govern- 
ment in  reaching  a  solution  of  these  difficulties: 

The  transfer  of  troops  Is  being  effected  within  the 
time  allotted  despite  the  difficulties  made  by  the  popu- 
lation. The  judicial  authorities  handling  the  cases 
arising  from  the  violent  seditious  movement  of  Decem- 
ber 1  are  proceeding  with  circumspection,  confining 
their  action  to  lialing  before  regular  tribunals  only 
those  directly  implicated  in  the  sedition.  Calm  reigns 
in  the  capital;  the  provinces  are  untroubled  by  re- 
volt. 

The  Hellenic  Government  has  a  right,  therefore,  to 
expect  to  see  the  relations  with  the  Entente  in  the  way 
of  a  definite  reestabllshment  of  reciprocal  confidence. 
Nevertheless,  the  blockade  of  the  coasts  and  islands 
of  Greece  continues,  and  an  artificial  extension  of  the 
revolutionary  movement  in  the  C'yclades  Islands,  tol- 
erated by  the  Allied  fleet  aided  by  certain  disturbing 
elements  ^  tends,  contrary  to  the  Intent  of  the  agree- 
ment respecting  the  neutral  zone  erected  in  Macedonia, 

1  The  Anglo-French  secret  police. 
515 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  alienate  new  portions  of  Greek  territory  from  the 
legitimate  government. 

The  Hellenic  Government  presumes  that  such  action 
cannot  be  the  intention  of  the  Powers.  It  is  per- 
suaded that  the  Powers  do  not  purpose  to  proceed  to 
hostile  acts  toward  Greece  after  having  occupied  a 
large  part  of  the  country  and  accomplished  an  en- 
feebling of  its  military  strength.   .  .  . 

The  present  state  of  affairs  begins  to  provoke  the 
profoundest  popular  unrest.  .  .  .  Public  opinion  in  the 
Allied  countries  continues  to  be  misled  by  mendacious 
press  reports  emanating  largely  from  Saloniki,  while 
the  official  versions,  the  truth  of  which  could  easily  be 
investigated  by  the  Allied  representatives  in  Athens, 
find  no  place  in  the  Allied  press.  .  .  . 

If  anarchy  be  encouraged  in  this  country,  the  Gov- 
ernment can  no  longer  regard  with  the  same  confidence 
its  responsibilities  in  respect  to  the  maintenance  of 
that  public  tranquillity  essential  to  security  through- 
out the  kingdom.  The  Government  is  firmly  convinced 
that,  as  the  Allies  have  frequently  officially  declared 
their  disapproval  of  any  subversive,  anti-dynastic 
movement  in  Greece,  and  as  it  is  no  longer  possible  to 
question  the  distinction  which  is  made  by  Greek  opin- 
ion between  Venizelism  and  sympathy  with  the  Entente, 
a  clearing  up  of  the  situation  will  not  be  difficult  to 
accomplish. 

Undoubtedly  a  clearing  up  of  the  situation 
would  not  have  been  difficult  had  the  British  and 
French  ministers  shown  any  disposition  to  clear 
it  up.  They  did  not.  Count  Bosdari  worked 
night  and  day  to  effect  a  modus  vivendi  short  of 
war  between  the  Greeks  and  his  country's  allies, 

516 


ANATHEMA ! 

but  he  had  no  help  from  France  or  England. 
The  blockade  was  no  longer  pinching;  it  was 
throttling  Greece. 

The  Allies  continued  to  put  revolutionists 
ashore  on  the  Greek  islands  and  to  protect  them 
while  they  reduced  the  islanders  to  subjection, 
sometimes  by  methods  of  distinct  brutality. 
The  family  of  aged  G.  Daleggio,  a  Greek, 
sometime  German  consular  agent  at  Syra, 
complained  to  the  American  legation  that  he 
had  died  as  the  result  of  ill  treatment  at  the 
hands  of  the  Venizelists  occupying  the  island. 
The  Holy  SjTiod  of  Greece  formally  appealed 
to  the  pope,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and 
the  Holy  Synod  of  Russia  against  the  encour- 
agement given  by  the  Allies  to 

a  small  political  group  which  takes  advantage  of  a 
foreign  military  occupation  to  terrorize  the  State  and 
which,  not  hesitating  hefore  recruitment  by  force,  has 
imprisoned  and  expelled  priests  and  prelates  who  have 
remained  faithful  to  their  duty.   .  .  .^ 

"The  Greek  church,"  the  appeal  continues,  "would 
sin  in  the  sight  of  God  and  betray  its  mission  were  it 

1  The  prelates  of  higher  rank  arrested  by  the  revolutionists  and 
still  held  imprisoned,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,  are: 
The  Archbishops  of  Agathanpelos,  Drama,  Cosani  and  the  Metro- 
politan of  Crete;  the  Bishops  of  Grevena,  Photios,  Syra  and 
Paronaxia. 

517 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

to  remain  silent  in  the  presence  of  the  grave  danger 
in  which  the  people  find  themselves  of  dying  of  starva- 
tion. This  so-called  'pacific  blockade'  not  only  is  ruin- 
ing our  country  materially  and  destroying  every  com- 
mercial, industrial  and  maritime  activity,  but  it  also 
threatens  the  inhuman  and  terrible  destruction  of  a 
Christian  population  of  men,  women  and  children  un- 
able to  bear  arms,  which  even  armies  and  navies  at  war 
are  bound  to  spare. 

With  this  declared  attitude  of  the  Greek 
Church,  in  concert  with  the  whole  Hellenic  peo- 
ple, it  was  no  strange  thing  on  Christmas  day  to 
see  the  venerable  Archbishop  of  Athens,  ]Mon- 
seignor  Theoclitos,  mount  on  a  cairn  of  stones  in 
the  center  of  a  vast  multitude,  and  pronounce  the 
anathema  of  the  church  of  Greece  upon  "the 
traitor,  Venizelos,"  and  all  his  followers.  From 
early  morning,  tens  of  thousands  of  men,  women, 
and  even  children  assembled  at  the  parade- 
ground  of  Athens  to  repeat  the  age-old  ceremony 
of  anathema  against  Venizelos.  The  Govern- 
ment had  forbidden  the  demonstration,  hut  its 
prohibition  deterred  no  one.  Before  three 
o'clock  Christmas  afternoon,  fully  60,000  people 
had  gathered  at  the  appointed  spot. 

As  in  the  days  of  Alcibiades,  each  of  those  who 
came  carried  a  stone  which,  cast  into  a  pile, 

518 


ANATHEMA ! 

erected  a  monument  to  the  national  hatred  of 
him  against  whom  the  anathema  was  pronounced. 
Among  the  participants  were  not  a  few  who  had 
been  followers  of  the  Cretan  until  the  revela- 
tions of  the  plot  of  December  1 ;  there  were  dele- 
gates of  Hellenes  from  the  irridentist  provinces 
of  Asia  Minor,  who  charged  Venizelos  with  hav- 
ing, through  his  own  ambition,  "ruined  the  hope 
of  realizing  an  united  Hellenism."  I  saw  one 
old  woman,  bent  under  a  huge,  rough  rock 
brought  from  the  stony  land  of  her  farm  in 
Attica.  As  she  cast  her  missile,  she  cried  in  a 
strident  voice: 

"We  made  him  premier;  but  he  was  not  con- 
tent. He  would  make  himself  king.  Anath- 
ema!" And  she  flung  out  her  hand,  the  bony- 
fingers  outstretched  in  sign  of  the  curse  she 
called  down  upon  the  head  of  the  Cretan. 

The  Archbishop  of  Athens  voiced  the  feelings 
of  the  Greeks  in  few  words,  but  telling: 

"Accursed  be  Elephtherios  Venizelos,  who  has 
imprisoned  priests,  who  has  plotted  against  his 
king  and  his  country!" 

Eight  bishops,  representing  every  district  of 
old  Greece,  followed  him  in  the  same  ceremony. 

521 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  TEOPLE 

Subsequently,  not  a  village,  not  a  hamlet  of  old 
Greece  did  not  repeat  the  anathema  of  Venizelos 
on  its  own  account.  For  months,  Venizelos  had 
insisted  upon  elections.  In  a  way  these  spon- 
taneous ceremonies  were  vastly  more  indicative 
than  any  elections  could  ever  have  been  of  the 
place  to  which  the  great  Cretan  had  fallen  in  the 
esteem  of  his  countrymen. 

A  week  later,  the  laborers,  always  previously 
the  ardent  supporters  of  Venizelos,  registered 
their  separate  judgment  of  "a  revolutionary 
movement  conducted  by  a  small  number  of  trai- 
tors which  is  being  extended  within  the  islands 
by  the  use  of  the  specter  of  famine,"  which  they 
presented  to  the  American  minister,  Mr.  Drop- 
pers, praying  the  President  of  the  United 
States  to  end  the  blockade.  Over  tlii-ee  hundred 
labor-unions  signed  the  appeal  in  which  it  was 
charged  that : 

The  foodstuffs  consigned  to  the  food  control  com- 
mittee of  the  country  are  seized  by  the  very  Powers 
maintaining  the  blockade  and  turned  over,  in  contempt 
of  all  human  justice,  to  those  who  have  fomented  and 
directed  the  revolutionary  movement,  at  Saloniki. 

On  December  27  the  hospitals  of  Athens  were 
522 


ANATHEMA! 

forced  to  refuse  further  patients,  as  they  were 
unable  to  feed  them.  The  premier  shewed  me 
his  daily  budget  of  telegi'ams  from  all  over  the 
country,  a  ghastly  record  of  privation,  hunger, 
and  death.  The  Government  once  more  re- 
quested the  Allied  powers  to  state  the  terms  com- 
pliance with  which  would  induce  the  raising  of 
the  blockade.  In  reply,  on  December  31  Count 
Bosdari,  in  behalf  of  the  Allied  ministers  still 
aboard  the  Ahassieh,  out  of  sight  of  the  famine 
stalking  through  the  land,  presented  the  final  ul- 
timatum of  the  Entente  Powers. 

It  was  sweeping  and  complete.  "JNIoral 
reparations,"  including  a  public  salute  to  the  flag 
of  the  Allied  nations  were  required,  for  the  Greek 
defeat  of  the  Allied  landing  force  on  December 
1.  The  commander  of  the  first  army  corps 
must  be  relieved  of  his  command  "unless  the  royal 
government  can  satisfy  the  Allied  powers  that 
this  measure  should  be  applied  to  another  gen- 
eral officer  upon  whom  the  responsibility  for  the 
orders  issued  December  1  rests."  As  the  king 
was  plainly,  albeit  veiledly,  indicated  in  this 
phrase,  the  Greeks  keenly  resented  this  imputa- 
tion.    ^Moreover,  all  the  Venizelists,  implicated 

528 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

in  the  abortive  plot  of  December  1  and  2  were  to 
be  liberated  immediately,  without  due  process  of 
law,  and  the  property  belonging  to  Venizelists 
destroyed  during  the  two  days  was  to  be  recom- 
pensed at  the  national  expense.  There  was  no 
mention  of  recompense  for  property  destroyed 
by  thq  Allied  bombardment  of  Athens. 

"The  Powers  guarantors  inform  the  Hellenic  Gov- 
ernment that  they  reserve  full  liberty  of  action,"  the 
ultimatum  continued,  "in  case  the  government  of  His 
Majesty  the  King  of  the  Hellenes  gives  new  cause  of 
complaint." 

This  employment,  for  the  first  time,  of  the  full, 
formal  title  of  King  Constantine  indicated  only 
too  clearly  that  it  was  in  respect  to  him,  not  his 
government,  that  these  reservations  were  made. 
Neither  did  that  gratuitous  fling  at  the  Greek 
sovereign  render  the  ultimatum  more  acceptable 
to  the  Hellenic  people.  Under  the  head  of 
guarantees,  the  document  read: 

The  Greek  forces  in  continental  Greece  and  Eubcea 
and  generally  stationed  outside  the  Peloponnessus 
must  be  reduced  to  the  number  of  men  strictly  neces- 
sary to  the  maintenance  of  order  and  police  protec- 
tion. All  armament  and  munitions  in  excess  of  that 
corresponding  to  this  effective,  must  be  transported  to 
the  Peloponnessus;  likewise  all  the  machine  guns  and 

524 


ANATHEMA ! 

artillery  of  the  Greek  army  with  their  ammunition,  so 
that  once  the  transfer  has  taken  place  there  will  re- 
main outside  the  Peloponncssus  neither  cannon,  ma- 
chine guns  nor  the  material  of  mobilization.  .  .  .  The 
military'  situation  thus  established  will  be  maintained 
so  long  as  the  Allies  judge  necessary  [presumably  even 
after  the  end  of  the  European  war]  under  the  sur- 
veillance of  special  delegates  they  shall  select  and  ac- 
credit for  this  purpose  to  the  Greek  authorities. 

Every  meeting  and  assemblage  of  reservists  in  Greece 
north  of  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth,  must  be  forbidden. 

The  demand  for  the  release  of  the  Venizelists 
without  due  process  of  law  abdicated,  far  more 
clearly  than  ever  Austria-Hungary  had  proposed 
in  the  case  of  Serbia,  all  authority  of  the  Greek 
courts.  Recalling  that  the  reservists  of  Greece 
are  merely  the  male  population  capable  of  bear- 
ing arms,  the  last  requirement  qouted  above,  ab- 
dicated the  constitutional  right  of  assembly  in 
Greece  as  effectually  as  if  the  entire  country  had 
been  put  under  foreign  martial  law. 


525 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE   UNENDING   BLOCKADE 

The  effect  of  the  demands  of  the  AlHed  ulti- 
matum on  the  Greek  people  was  stupefying. 
That  night,hundreds  paraded  the  streets  crying: 
"Long  live  starvation!  Down  with  the  ultima- 
tum!" As  they  marched,  they  carried  pitiful, 
gaudy  portraits  of  King  Constantine,  as  if  they 
were  sacred  icons  or  some  sort  of  talismans 
against  hunger.  There  could  be  no  doubt  that 
rather  than  accede  to  this  final  blow  at  their  in- 
dependence and  sovereignty  they  were  to  the  last 
man  ready  to  fight,  even  against  four  great  world 
powers.  The  situation  created  not  so  much,  per- 
haps, by  the  demands  as  by  the  tone  of  the  ulti- 
matum, by  the  long,  inflexible  pressure  of  the 
blockade,  and,  above  all,  by  the  open  aid  the 
Allies  had  given  and  were  still  giving  the  revolu- 
tionaries, was  so  menacing  that  I  sought  the  king 
at  once  to  learn  his  purpose.  I  found  him  at 
Prince  Nicholas's,  consulting  with  his  brother,  as 

526 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

he  often  did  before  reaching  a  momentous  de- 
cision. He  seemed  to  have  aged  greatly  in  the 
past  few  weeks,  to  have  aged  years  since  I  had 
seen  him  first  in  the  summer  of  1915.  Yet  he 
still  kept  that  smiling  cool-headedness  which  he 
had  never  lost,  even  in  his  moments  of  wrath, 
since  the  beginning  of  his  country's  trials. 

He  reviewed  in  detail  the  situation  of  Greece 
since  the  war  first  came  to  the  near  East,  under- 
lining step  by  step  the  immense,  though  unap- 
preciated, concessions  Greece  had  made  to  the 
Allies.  His  complaint  was  not  so  much  of  the 
blockade  or  even  of  the  new  Allied  demands,  as 
of  what  he  termed  "the  determination  of  the 
British  and  French  neither  to  understand  the 
real  state  of  affairs  in  Greece  nor  to  permit  any 
knowledge  of  it  to  reach  the  world  at  large."  He 
gave  me  very  plainly  to  understand  that  the  crux 
of  the  whole  situation  lay  in  the  Allies'  espousal 
of  the  revolutionary  movement  in  Greece,  and 
their  more  or  less  frank  efforts  to  promote  civil 
war  in  his  country.  He  ridiculed  the  idea  that 
he  had  ever  dreamed  of  attacking  Sarrail's  flank. 

"The  French  and  tlie  British  do  not  seem  to 
think  I  am  much  of  a  soldier,"  he  said,  laugh- 

527 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

ingly.  "But,  believe  me,  I  am  more  of  a  soldier 
than  to  attempt  anything  so  mad  as  that,  even 
if  I  wanted  to,  which  I  do  not." 

Recalling  his  lengthy  message  of  November  27 
to  Premier  Briand,  he  referred  once  more  to  his 
four  offers  to  join  the  Allies  in  the  war,  all  of 
which  had  been  rejected,  and  asked  with  some 
asperity  why  the  truth  about  these  offers  was 
always  so  carefully  suppressed  by  the  Allied 
governments,  while  unfounded  reports  of  his  al- 
leged pro-Germanism  were  widely  exploited  in 
the  British  and  French  press.  I  asked  him 
point-blank  upon  what  Admiral  Dartige  du 
Fournet  could  possibly  have  based  his  report  that 
the  Greeks  treacherously  attacked  him  on  Decem- 
ber 1. 

"You  were  there  yourself,"  he  replied. 
"Probably  you  saw  more  than  any  one  else  of 
the  whole  affair.  Did  you  see  anything  that 
would  substantiate  such  a  claim?" 

I  was  forced  to  admit  that,  on  the  contrary,  I 
had  seen  the  Greeks,  in  position  to  annihilate  a 
good  part  of  the  admiral's  force,  withholding 
their  fire,  under  orders. 

"The  Greeks  merely  defended  their  own,"  the 
528 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

monarch  stated,  "as  any  Englislunan  or  French- 
man would  have  done  in  similar  circumstances. 
No  Greek  either  then  or  even  now  has  any  de- 
sire to  fight  the  Allies.  Neither  a  continuation 
of  the  blockade  nor  further  coercive  measures  on 
the  part  of  the  Entente  can  induce  me  ever  to  de- 
clare war  on  France  or  England,  and  don't  for- 
get that  under  the  Greek  constitution  I  am  the 
only  man  in  Greece  who  can  declare  war.  The 
Hellenic  people  to-day  do  not  want  war  with 
anybody.  They  are  ready  to  tighten  their  belts 
and  starve,  if  need  be,  until  the  truth  of  the  situa- 
tion in  Greece  can  penetrate  to  the  statesmen 
and  the  people  of  England  and  France." 

Again  through  the  efforts  of  King  Constantine 
the  terms  of  this  last  ultimatum  were  accepted  in 
full.  The  Government  immediately  took  charge 
of  the  distribution  of  the  small  remaining  stock 
of  food-stuffs  in  Greece.  Every  grown  person 
was  allowed  six  and  one  half  ounces  of  bread 
per  day.  King  Constantine,  as  head  of  a  family 
of  six  grown  persons  and  two  infants,  drew  his 
bread-card  like  any  other  citizen  of  Athens.  At 
the  same  time,  on  January  5, 1917,  Premier  Lam- 
bros  sent  to  the  Allied  conference  that  had  been 

629 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 
called  in  Rome  a  full  statement  of  the  situation 
in  Greece,  urging  an  early  raising  of  the  block- 
ade, and  guarantees  from  the  Allies  that  the 
revolution  in  Greece  would  not  be  further  ex- 
tended through  their  influence.  As  a  conse- 
quence of  this  able  summary,  on  January  8  the 
Allied  diplomatists  presented  a  supplementary 
note,  insisting  upon  a  more  formal  acceptance 
of  their  last  ultimatum  than  that  they  had  al- 
ready received,  and  took  occasion  at  the  same 
time  to  offer  certain  guarantees  against  any  fur- 
ther encroachments  of  the  revolutionists  than 
those  they  had  already  sponsored : 

The  Allied  Powers  agree  not  to  permit  the  with- 
drawal of  the  Greek  troops  to  the  Peloponnessus  to  be 
seized  by  the  partisans  of  the  provisional  government 
as  an  opportunity  to  occupy  by  land  or  sea  any  part 
whatsoever  of  Greek  territory  thus  deprived  of  all 
means  of  resistance.  The  Allied  Powers  likewise  agree 
not  to  permit  the  authorities  of  the  provisional  gov- 
ernment to  establish  themselves  in  any  part  of  the  ter- 
ritory of  Greece  now  actually  in  possession  of  the 
royal  government  which  they  [the  Allies]  may  be 
brought  themselves  to  occupy  temporarily  for  military 
reasons. 

This  was  perfectly  satisfactory  to  the  Hellenic 
Government.  Had  it  been  as  loyally  executed 
as  the  engagements  of  Greece  toward  the  Allies, 

530 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

there  would  have  been  no  further  difficulties  be- 
tween Greece  and  the  Entente.  After  an  all- 
night  session  of  the  crown  council,  in  which  King 
Constantine's  conciliatory  advice  once  more  pre- 
vailed. Foreign  INIinister  Zalocostas  drew  up  the 
written  and  categorical  acceptance  of  every  de- 
mand contained  in  the  Allied  ultimatum  of  De- 
cember 31,  adding,  however,  a  further  plea  in  fa- 
vor of  lifting  the  blockade : 

The  government  believes  it  its  duty  again  to  draw 
the  attention  of  the  Allied  governments  to  the  salutory 
influence  upon  the  public  opinion  of  the  country,  exas- 
perated to  the  highest  degree,  that  the  cessation  of  a 
measure  applied  to  a  friendly  and  neutral  country  would 
have. 

The  Hellenic  Government's  appeal  was  fruit- 
less. Even  the  Venizelist  occupation  of  the  loyal 
Greek  islands  did  not  cease.  The  blockade  con- 
tinued, absolute  since  November  30,  and  a  prac- 
tical prohibition  of  importation  of  the  food-stuffs 
necessary  to  life,  since  September  30.  The 
death-rate  increased  daily.  In  January,  twenty- 
five  dead  were  reported  and  certified  to  by  phy- 
sicians as  due  to  starvation ;  in  February,  twenty- 
six;  in  March,  forty-nine;  in  tlie  first  ten  days  of 
April,  ten.     Ahnost  all  were  women  or  children. 

531 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Most  deaths  were  not  reported  at  all,  especially 
in  out-of-the-way  places.  It  is  known,  however, 
that  by  March,  1917,  there  had  been  four  deaths 
from  starvation  on  the  island  of  Ithaca,  one  on 
St.  Maura,  five  at  Preveza,  three  at  Messina,  two 
on  Cephalonia,  and  one  on  Euboea.  Taken  as 
mere  measures  for  the  rest  of  Greece,  these  must 
indicate  hundreds  of  deaths. 

Worst  of  all,  perhaps,  was  the  suffering  of  the 
poorer  classes,  the  dock  laborers,  factory  hands, 
and  unskilled  workmen  of  all  kinds,  thrown  out 
of  employment  by  the  shutting  down  of  all  busi- 
ness due  to  the  lack  of  raw  material,  normally 
brought  by  sea,  of  coal,  and  of  money  to  pay 
them.  It  was  of  little  moment  to  them  that  the 
price  of  the  necessities  of  life  had  leaped  beyond 
the  reach  even  of  the  well  to  do,  since  the  poor 
had  no  money  at  all.  First  the  bread  was  made 
of  two  thirds  bran ;  then  it  was  scarcely  made  at 
all.  In  the  country  districts  the  peasants  lived 
upon  roots  and  herbs,  like  animals ;  in  the  city  a 
handful  of  olives  kept  body  and  soul  together. 

But  what  wounded  the  Hellenic  people  more 
than  hunger  was  the  continued  attacks  upon 
them  and  upon  their  king  in  the  Allied  press. 

632 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

The  Venizelist  press-bureau  at  Saloniki,  with  tlie 
cables  free  of  censorship,  while  those  of  Athens 
were  barred  to  all  but  favored  news,  filled  the 
M'orld  with  falsehood,  with  absurd  charges,  and 
ridiculous  assertions.  King  Constantine  was 
said  to  receive  part  of  his  salary  from  the 
French,  British,  and  Russian  governments,  and 
was  accused  of  base  Higratitude  because  he  did 
not  therefore  plunge  his  country  into  war.  He 
was  charged  with  maintaining  a  secret  wireless 
station,  in  constant  communication  with  Berlin, 
on  Queen  Olga's  summer  villa  at  Tatoy.  State- 
ments he  had  never  dreamed  of  making  were  put 
in  his  mouth  and  published  broadcast.  He  was 
alleged  to  have  taken  his  orders  on  the  best  way 
to  maintain  his  throne  from  his  brother-in-law, 
the  Emperor  of  Germany.  Again  and  again  the 
story  of  his  "treacherous  ambush"  of  the  Allied 
forces  on  December  1  was  repeated  in  the  British 
and  French  press.  The  old  tale  that  he  had  a 
secret  agreement  with  Germany  to  the  prejudice 
of  the  Allies  was  revived  and  reprinted  witli  em- 
bellishments. There  was  not,  and  is  not,  one 
single  word  of  truth  in  any  of  these  grotesque 
stories. 

533 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  constant  repetition  of  these  false  state- 
ments in  London,  Paris,  and  the  United  States 
has  done  even  more  to  embitter  the  Hellenic  peo- 
j)le  than  the  ordeal  of  starvation  inflicted  upon 
them  by  the  Alhed  powers.  Starvation  only  suc- 
ceeded in  drawing  them  closer  to  their  soldier- 
sovereign,  the  democratic  monarch  so  truly  of 
them,  so  very  really  a  Greek  of  the  Greeks,  re- 
flecting their  will,  working  out  in  the  most  inti- 
mate touch  with  them  the  destiny  they  have  con- 
ceived and  borne  untarnished  in  their  souls 
through  four  hundred  centuries.  Therefore 
when  the  Venizelist  propaganda  at  last  un- 
masked its  underlying  purpose  and  counseled 
the  Allies  to  dethrone  King  Constantine,  in 
violation  of  their  repeated  promises  not  to  dis- 
turb the  constitutional  government  of  Greece,  the 
Greeks  made  desperate  efforts  to  get  the  truth 
of  their  situation  to  the  world.  It  was  use- 
less. Their  denials  of  the  fantastic  imaginings 
of  the  Venizelist  press-bureau  were  not  published 
even  when  they  could  get  them  by  the  Allied 
censors. 

On  January  14,  New  Year's  Day  by  the  Greek 
calendar,  I  had  my  farewell  audience  of  the  big, 

534 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

bluff  man  his  countrymen  call  their  "houm- 
haros."  A  band  of  Greeks  in  their  white  fus- 
tanelles  had  come  to  the  palace,  as  is  the  cus- 
tom on  Xew  Year's  day,  to  chant  choruses  in 
praise  of  king  and  country.  When  the  cere- 
mony was  over,  we  walked  together  into  his 
study,  under  the  window  of  which  one  of  the 
shells  from  the  Allied  fleet  had  fallen  during  the 
bombardment  of  the  city  on  December  1. 

"I  am  sorry  you  are  leaving  us,"  King  Con- 
stantine  said  abruptly.  *'I  do  not  believe  that 
there  is  a  man  or  woman  in  Greece  who  does  not 
feel  very  profoundly  what  a  great  thing  it  has 
been  for  us  during  this  most  critical  period  in  our 
national  history  to  have  an  American  corre- 
spondent here  to  tell  the  world  with  absolute  im- 
partiality the  truth  of  what  is  taking  place. 
They  tell  me,  however,  that  a  good  many  of  your 
telegrams  to  the  United  States  never  get  through 
the  censors."  The  King  laughed  a  httle  rue- 
fully. "You  have  nothing  on  me,"  he  added. 
"Neither  do  mine. 

"I  am  afraid  there  is  no  way,"  he  went  on. 
"We  might  as  well  be  in  a  dungeon  here  for  all 
the  touch  we  have  with  the  rest  of  the  world. 

535 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  most  ridiculous,  the  most  outrageous  non- 
sense about  what  is  happening  in  Greece  is  pub- 
lished daily  in  the  European  press,  presumably 
written  by  journahsts  who  are  not  even  on  the 
spot  to  see  the  facts  for  themselves.  And  when 
my  Government  sends  official  denials  of  them, 
the  European  newspapers  will  not  even  publish 
the  denials.  Take  this  letter,  for  example.  As 
you  see,  it  is  from  ex-Mayor  Bennakis,  who  was 
arrested  on  December  2  during  the  attempted 
VenizeHst  revolution.  A  French  newspaper 
publishes  a  story  that  Bennakis  was  so  badly  mis- 
treated that  his  right  arm  had  to  be  amputated, 
and  he  was  on  the  point  of  death.  Far  from 
having  his  arm  amputated,  he  writes  me  a  letter 
with  it,  as  you  see,  expressing  his  gratitude  for 
the  kindness  with  which  he  has  been  treated,  and 
assuring  me  that  he  is  my  'most  loyal  and  de- 
voted subject.'  Your  minister,  Mr.  Droppers, 
personally  investigated  the  treatment  of  those 
who  were  imprisoned  on  the  charge  of  sedition  as 
a  result  of  the  abortive  revolution  of  December 
1  and  2,  and  told  me  himself  that  he  found  them 
very  comfortable.  My  Government  therefore 
telegraphed  the  French  press  a  denial  of  the  Ben- 

536 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

nakis  story  as  well  as  of  any  number  of  similar 
fabrications;  but  I  have  never  heard  of  any  of 
the  denials  being  published. 

"After  all,  all  that  we  ask  is  fair  play.  But  it 
seems  almost  hopeless  to  try  to  get  the  truth  out 
of  Greece  to  the  rest  of  the  world  in  the  present 
circumstances.  We  have  been  sorely  tried  these 
last  two  years  and  we  don't  pretend  we  have  al- 
ways been  angels  under  the  constant  irritation  of 
the  ever-increasing  Allied  control  of  every  lit- 
tle thing  in  our  private  life — letters,  telegrams, 
police,  everything.  Why,  do  you  know  that  my 
sister-in-law,  Princess  Alice  of  Battenberg,  was 
permitted  to  receive  a  telegram  of  Christmas 
greetings  from  her  mother  in  England  only  by 
courtesy  of  the  British  legation  here! 

"Moreover,  by  taking  an  active  hand  in  our 
own  internal  politics,  England  and  France  espe- 
cially have  succeeded  in  alienating  an  admira- 
tion, a  sympathy,  and  a  devotion  toward  them 
on  the  part  of  the  Greek  people  that  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  was  virtually  an  unanimous 
tradition.  I  am  a  soldier  myself,  and  I  know 
nothing  about  politics,  but  it  seems  to  me  that 
when  you  start  with  almost  the  whole  of  a  coun- 

537 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

try  passionately  in  your  favor  and  end  with  it 
almost  unanimously  against  you,  you  haven't 
succeeded  very  well.  And  I  quite  understand 
how  those  responsible  for  such  a  result  seek  to 
excuse  themselves  by  exaggerating  the  difficul- 
ties they  have  had  to  contend  with  in  Greece — 
by  talking  about  Greek  treachery  and  the  im- 
mense, sinister  organization  of  German  propa- 
ganda that  has  foiled  them  at  every  turn,  and  so 
on.  The  only  trouble  with  that  is  that  they  make 
us  pay  for  the  errors  of  their  policy.  The  people 
of  Greece  are  paying  for  them  now  in  suffering 
and  death  from  exposure  and  hunger,  while 
France  and  England  starve  us  out  because  they 
have  made  the  mistake  of  assuming  that  their 
man,  Venizelos,  could  deliver  the  Greek  army 
and  the  Greek  people  to  the  Entente  powers 
whenever  they  wanted  to  use  Greece  for  their 
advantage,  regardless  of  the  interests  of  Greece 
as  an  independent  nation. 

"There  are  just  two  things  about  our  desper- 
ate struggle  to  save  ourselves  from  destruction 
that  I  am  going  to  ask  you  to  try  to  make  clear 
to  the  people  of  America.  The  rest  will  have  to 
come  out  some  day.    All  the  blockades  and  cen- 

538 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

sorships  in  the  world  cannot  keep  the  truth  down 
forever.  Understand,  I  am  not  presuming  to  sit 
in  judgment  on  the  Entente  powers.  I  appreci- 
ate that  they  have  got  other  things  to  think  about 
besides  Greece.  What  I  say  is  meant  to  help 
them  do  justice  to  themselves  and  to  us,  a  small 
nation. 

"The  first  point  is  this :  we  have  two  problems 
on  our  hands  here  in  Greece,  an  internal  one  and 
an  external  one.  The  Entente  powers  have 
made  the  fundamental  mistake  of  considering 
them  both  as  one.  They  said  to  themselves: 
'Venizelos  is  the  strongest  man  in  Greece,  and 
he  is  heart  and  soul  with  us.  He  can  deliver  the 
Greeks  whenever  he  wants  to.  Let  us  back 
Venizelos,  therefore,  and  when  we  need  the  Greek 
army,  he  will  turn  it  over  to  us.' 

"Well,  they  were  wrong,  as  I  think  you  have 
seen  for  yourself  since  you  have  been  here. 
Venizelos  was  perhaps  the  strongest  man  in 
Greece,  as  they  thought ;  but  the  moment  he  tried 
to  turn  over  the  Greek  army  to  the  Entente,  as 
if  we  were  a  lot  of  mercenaries,  he  became  the 
weakest  man  in  Greece  and  the  most  despised. 
For   in   Greece   no   man   delivers   the   Greeks. 

539 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

They  decide  their  own  destinies  as  a  free  people, 
and  England,  France,  and  Russia  put  together 
cannot  change  them,  either  by  force  of  arms  or 
by  starvation.  And  they  have  tried  both.  As 
for  Venizelos  himself,  you  had  a  man  once  in 
your  country,  a  very  great  man,  who  had  even 
been  Vice-president  of  the  United  States,  who 
planned  to  split  the  country  in  two  and  set  him- 
self up  as  ruler  in  the  part  he  separated  from 
the  rest." 

"Your  Majesty  means  Aaron  Burr?"  I  asked. 

"Precisely.  But  he  only  plotted  to  do  a  thing 
which  he  never  accomplished.  Venizelos,  with 
the  assistance  of  the  Allied  powers, — and  he 
never  could  have  done  it  without  them, — has  suc- 
ceeded for  the  time  being  in  the  same  kind  of 
seditious  enterprise.  You  called  Aaron  Burr  a 
traitor.  Well,  that 's  what  the  Greek  people 
call  Venizelos. 

"The  impression  has  been  spread  broadcast 
that  Venizelos  stands  in  Greece  for  liberalism, 
and  his  opponents  for  absolutism,  for  militarism. 
It  is  just  the  other  way  round.  Venizelos  stands 
for  whatever  suits  his  own  personal  book ;  his  idea 
of  government  is  an  absolute  dictatorship,  a  sort 

540 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

of  INIexican  government,  I  take  it.  When  he 
was  premier  he  broke  every  man  who  dared  to 
disagree  with  him  in  his  own  party.  He  never 
sought  to  exi3ress  the  will  of  the  people;  he  im- 
posed his  will  on  the  peojjle.  The  Greek  people 
will  not  stand  that.  They  demand  a  constitu- 
tional government  in  which  there  is  room  for  two 
parties,  hberals  and  conservatives,  each  with  a 
definite  program,  as  in  the  United  States  or  Eng- 
land or  any  other  civilized  country;  not  a  per- 
sonal government,  where  the  only  party  division 
is  into  Venizelists  and  anti-Venizelists. 

"That  is  one  thing  I  wanted  to  stay.  The 
other  is  about  the  effect  of  the  so-called  German 
propaganda  in  Greece.  The  Entente  powers 
seem  to  have  adoj^ted  the  attitude  that  every- 
body who  is  not  willing  to  fight  on  their  side  must 
be  a  pro-German.  Nothing  could  be  falser  in 
respect  to  Greece.  The  present  resentment 
against  the  Allies  in  Greece — and  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  it,  especially  since  the  blockade — is  due 
to  the  Allies  themselves,  not  to  any  German 
propaganda.  The  proof  of  it  is  that  when  the 
so-called  German  propaganda  was  at  its  height 
there  was  little  or  no  hostility  in  Grece  toward 

641 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

the  Allies.  It  has  only  been  since  the  diplomatic 
representatives  of  all  the  Central  empires,  and 
everybody  else  whom  the  Anglo-French  secret 
police  indicated  as  inimical  to  the  Entente,  have 
been  expelled  from  Greece,  and  any  German 
propaganda  rendered  virtually  impossible,  that 
there  has  grown  up  any  popular  feeling  against 
the  Entente. 

"Part  of  this  is  due  to  the  Entente's  identifica- 
tion of  their  greater  cause  with  the  personal  am- 
bitions of  Venizelos;  but  a  great  deal  has  also 
been  due  to  the  very  unfortunate  handling  of 
the  Allied  control  in  Greece.  When  you  write 
a  personal  letter  of  no  possible  international  sig- 
nificance to  a  friend  or  relative  in  Athens,  and 
post  it  in  Athens,  and  it  is  held  a  week,  opened, 
and  half  its  contents  blacked  out,  it  makes  you 
pretty  cross,  not  because  it  is  unspeakable  tyr- 
anny in  a  free  country  at  peace  with  all  the 
world,  but  because  it  is  so  silly.  For,  after  all, 
if  you  want  to  plot  with  a  man  living  in  the  same 
town,  you  don't  write  him  a  letter;  you  put  on 
your  hat  and  go  to  see  him.  Half  the  people  in 
Greece  have  been  continually  exasperated  by  just 
this  sort  of  unintelligent  control  that  has  irri- 

54g 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

tated  them  beyond  any  telling.  But  to  say  that 
they  are  pro-German  because  they  dislike  hav- 
ing their  private  letters  opened,  or  their  homes 
entered  without  any  legal  authority  whatsoever, 
is  childish.  It  is  a  vicious  circle.  The  Entente 
takes  exceptionally  severe  measures  because  they 
allege  the  Greeks  are  pro-German;  the  Greeks 
very  naturally  resent  the  measures  thus  taken,  as 
would  the  i\jnericans  or  anybody  else.  The  En- 
tente then  turns  around  and  says:  'You  see, 
that  proves  that  the  Greeks  are  pro-German,  as 
we  suspected !' 

"The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  there  is  less 
pro-German  feeling  in  Greece  than  in  the  United 
States,  Holland,  or  any  of  the  Scandinavian 
countries.  And  there  is  far  less  anti-Entente 
propaganda  in  Greece  even  now  than  there  is 
anti-Hellenic  propaganda  in  England,  France, 
and  Russia.  The  whole  feeling  of  the  Greek 
people  toward  the  Entente  powers  to-day  is  one 
of  sorrow  and  disillusionment.  They  had  heard 
so  much  of  this  war  'for  the  defense  of  little  na- 
tions' that  it  has  been  a  very  great  shock  to  them 
to  be  treated,  as  they  feel,  very  badly,  even 
cruelly,  for  no  reason  and  to  nobody's  profit. 

643 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

And  more  than  anything  else,  after  all  the  Greek 
Government  and  Greek  people  have  done  to  help 
the  Entente  powers  since  the  very  outbreak  of 
the  war,  they  deeply  resent  being  called  pro-Ger- 
man because  they  have  not  been  willing  to  see 
their  own  country  destroyed,  as  Serbia,  Mon- 
tenegro, and  Rumania  have  been  destroyed. 

"As  I  have  tried  repeatedly  to  point  out  to 
the  Entente  representatives,  there  can  be  only 
one  certain  guarantee  of  the  safety  of  the  Allied 
forces  in  the  Balkans  as  far  as  the  Greeks  are 
concerned — that  is  mutual  confidence.  The  as- 
sumption that  every  Greek  is  an  enemy  and  not 
to  be  trusted  is  merely  a  standing  challenge  to 
every  hothead  to  attempt  something  irreparable 
— irreparable  for  Greece  as  well  as  for  the  En- 
tente. 

"I  have  done  everything  I  could  to  dissipate  the 
mistrust  of  the  powers;  I  have  given  every  pos- 
sible assurance  and  guarantee.  Many  of  the 
military  measures  that  have  been  demanded  with 
such  circumstance  as  measures  of  security  I  my- 
self suggested  with  a  view  to  tranquilizing  the 
Allies,  and  I  myself  voluntarily  offered  to  ex- 

544! 


THE  UNENDING  BLOCKADE 

ecute.  jNIy  army,  wliich  any  soldier  knows  could 
never  conceivably  have  constituted  a  danger  to 
the  Allied  forces  in  iNIacedonia,  has  been  virtually 
put  in  jail  in  the  Peloponnesus.  jMy  people  have 
been  disarmed,  and  are  to-day  powerless  even 
against  revolution;  and  they  know  from  bitter 
ex^Derience  that  revolution  is  a  possibility  so  long 
as  the  Entente  powers  continue  to  finance  the 
openly  declared  revolutionary  party  under  Ven- 
izelos.  There  is  not  enough  food  left  in  Greece 
to  last  a  fortnight.  Not  the  Belgians  themselves 
under  German  rule  have  been  rendered  more 
helpless  than  are  we  in  Greece  to-day. 

"Is  n't  it,  therefore,  time  calmly  to  look  at  con- 
ditions in  Greece  as  they  are,  to  give  over  a  policy 
dictated  by  panic,  and  to  display  a  little  of  that 
high  quality  of  faith  which  alone  is  the  founda- 
tion of  friendship?" 

As  I  was  leaving,  I  asked  the  Greek  sovereign 
one  more  question. 

"What  will  you  do,  sir,  if  they  try  to  dethrone 
you? 

"I  was  born  here,"  King  Constantine  replied. 
"I  am  a  citizen  of  Athens.     Do  you  know  what 

545 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 
Athens  is  called  in  Greek?     ahmos  A0HNAmN— 
the  City  of  Athenians.    Well,  I,  too,  am  one  of 
those  Athenians.     No  one  can  take  that  from 
me." 


546 


EPILOGUE 

When  I  returned  to  New  York,  one  Sunday 
I  attended  a  meeting  of  Greeks  in  the  Terrace 
Garden.  A  Greek  who  had  known  me  in  Athens 
dragged  me  from  an  obscure  corner  of  the  press- 
box,  and  before  I  knew  it,  ^Ir.  Solon  Vlastos,  the 
chairman,  had  announced  that  a  man  who  had 
come  from  Greece  since  the  blockade  would 
speak, 

I  said  a  few  words  to  the  audience  in  Greek, 
and  they  cheered  themselves  hoarse.  As  I  was 
leaving  the  stage,  JMajor  Sioris  mounted  the 
steps  and,  taking  my  hand,  kissed  it.  Turning 
to  the  audience  he  cried : 

"I  kiss  the  hand  that  has  clasped  that  of  the 
houmharos!" 

In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  an  hundred  veterans 
of  two  wars  pressed  about  me,  to  my  intense  em- 
barrassment, to  kiss  my  hand,  their  brown  faces 
wet  with  tears. 

Many  people  with  whom  I  have  talked  since 
my  return  have  said : 

547 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

"After  all,  suppose  the  Greeks  have  had  a  raw 
deal,  what  of  it?  The  war  is  a  big  thing.  The 
Allies  are  right  on  the  big  lines.  Greece  is  only 
a  little  corner  of  the  whole.     Let  it  go!" 

I  am  afraid  I  cannot  quite  see  that.  The  Al- 
lies are  right  on  the  big  lines,  and  because  they 
are  right,  theirs  is  the  victory;  but  only  in  so 
much  as  they  are  right.  And  somehow  I  believe 
that  a  wrong  brings  its  own  punishment.  I  be- 
lieve that  if  the  Allies  had  not  been  untrue  to 
Serbia  and  unjust  to  Greece,  their  and  our  vic- 
tory would  have  come  sooner.  For  myself,  I 
want  to  see  the  Allies  right  in  all  things  great 
and  small.  Two  wrongs  do  not  make  a  right. 
Because  the  Germans  were  cruel  to  the  Belgians 
does  not  justify  the  British  and  French  in  being 
harsh,  to  use  no  stronger  term,  with  the  Greeks. 

The  Greeks  are  a  fine  and  loyal  people.  Had 
the  Allies  treated  them  as  a  fine  and  loyal  people, 
I  am  certain  they  would  have  been  fighting  now 
beside  the  French,  whom  they  have  always  loved, 
and  whom  they  love  even  yet. 


548 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  1 

VENIZELOS'S  MEMORANDA  TO  KING 
CONSTANTINE 

January  11,  1915. 
Sire: 

I  have  already  had  the  honor  of  submitting  to  Your 
Majesty  the  substance  of  a  communication  made  me  by  the 
British  minister  at  the  order  of  Sir  Edward  Grey.  By  this 
communication  Greece  finds  herself  once  more  confronted 
with  one  of  the  most  critical  events  of  her  national  his- 
torj'.  Until  to-day  our  policy  has  consisted  in  the  con- 
serving of  our  neutrality,  at  least  in  so  far  as  our  engage- 
ment toward  Serbia  has  not  demanded  our  leaving  it.  But 
to-day  we  are  called  upon  to  take  part  in  the  war — no 
longer  merely  to  discharge  a  moral  duty,  but  in  exchange 
for  compensations  which,  realized,  will  constitute  a  great 
and  powerful  Greece  such  as  even  the  most  optimistic  could 
not  have  imagined  a   few  years  ago. 

To  succeed  in  obtaining  these  great  compensations,  avc 
shall  undoubtedly  have  to  confront  great  dangers.  But 
after  having  studied  the  question  deeply  and  at  length,  I 
have  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  we  ought  to  face  these 
dangers.  We  should  confront  them  principally  because 
even  in  not  taking  part  in  the  war,  and  in  endeavoring  to 
maintain  our  neutrality  until  the  end  of  the  war,  we  shall 
still  be  exposed  to  great  risks. 

If  to-day  we  permit  Serbia  to  be  crushed  by  the  new 
Austro-German  invasion,  will  this  invasion  stop  at  our 
Macedonian  frontiers  or  will  it  not  naturally  be  attracted 
towards  Saloniki?  But  even  in  supposing  that  this  danger 
be  averted,  and  admitting  that  Austria,  content  witli  the 
military  crushing  of  Serbia,  will  not  wish  to  establish  her- 
self in  Macedonia,  yet  can  we  doubt  that  Bulgaria,  invited 
by  Austria,  will  not  come  forward  to  occupy  Serbian  Mace- 

551 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

donia?  We  should  then  come  to  the  aid  of  Serbia  if  we 
do  not  wish  to  dishonor  our  engagements  as  an  ally.  But 
if,  still  indifferent  to  our  own  moral  ruin,  we  remain 
passive  we  should  thus  be  tolerating  the  breaking  up  of  the 
equilibrium  of  the  Balkans  to  the  advantage  of  Bulgaria 
who,  thus  fortified,  might  either  immediately  or  after  some 
time,  attack  us  while  we  were  deprived  of  any  ally  and 
friend. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  we  had  previously  hastened  to  the 
succor  of  Serbia  as  to  the  accomplishment  of  an  impera- 
tive duty,  we  should  have  been  acting  under  circumstances 
much  more  unfavorable  than  if  we  went  to  her  aid  to-day. 
Because  Serbia  would  already  be  crushed,  and  consequently 
our  aid  would  be  entirely  useless,  or  at  least  not  sufficiently 
useful;  whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  in  refusing  to-day  the 
overtures  of  the  Entente  Powers,  we  should  not  receive, 
even  in  case  of  victory,  any  positive  compensation  assured 
for  the  aid  we  might  have  lent. 

But  it  is  necessary  to  examine  the  conditions  under  which 
we  should  have  to  participate  in  the  struggle.  Above  all 
we  ought  to  try  to  secure  the  cooperation  not  only  of  Ru- 
mania but  of  Bulgaria.  If  such  a  cooperation  could  be  ob- 
tained and  all  the  Christian  states  of  the  Balkans  might 
make  an  alliance,  not  only  would  all  danger  of  a  local  de- 
feat be  averted,  but  their  participation  would  constitute  an 
important  reinforcement  in  the  struggle  undertaken  by  the 
Entente  Powers;  it  would  not  even  be  exaggerated  to  say 
that  this  participation  would  exercise  a  considerable  influ- 
ence in  favor  of  the  domination  of  these  Powers. 

To  achieve  the  successful  issue  of  this  plan  I  believe  that 
important  concessions  must  be  made  to  Bulgaria.  Up  to 
this  time  we  have  not  only  refused  to  discuss  this  subject, 
but  we  have  declared  that  we  would  oppose  any  important 
concessions  being  made  to  her  by  Serbia — concessions 
which  might  upset  the  equilibrium  of  the  Balkans,  estab- 
lished by  the  treaty  of  Bucharest.  Our  policy  in  this 
connection  was  always  well  defined  up  to  the  present  time. 
But  to-day  things  have  obviously  changed:  at  the  moment 
when  there  rises  before  us  the  realization  of  our  national 
aspirations  in  Asia  Minor,  we  might  make  some  sacrifice  in 

552 


APPENDICES 

the  Balkans  in  order  to  assure  the  success  of  so  great  a 
policy. 

We  ought,  above  all,  to  withdraw  our  objections  to  con- 
cessions being  made  by  Serbia  to  Bulgaria,  even  if  these 
concessions  extend  to  the  right  bank  of  the  Vardar.  But 
if  these  are  not  sufficient  to  attract  Bulgaria  to  cooperate 
with  her  ancient  allies,  or  at  least  to  induce  her  to  guard 
a  benevolent  neutrality,  I  should  not  hesitate — painful  as 
tlie  act  would  be— to  advise  the  sacrifice  of  Cavalla  to  save 
Hellenism  in  Turkey  and  to  assure  the  creation  of  a  really 
great  Greece  comprising  nearh'  all  the  countries  where 
Hellenism  has  exercised  her  power  during  her  long  his- 
tory through  the  centuries.  This  sacrifice  would  not  be 
made  as  the  price  of  the  neutrality  of  Bulgaria,  but  as  a 
compensation  for  her  participation  in  the  war  with  the 
other  Allies. 

If  my  judgment  were  accepted,  it  would  be  necessary,  by 
intervention  of  the  Entente  Powers,  to  have  the  guarantee 
that  Bulgaria  would  pledge  herself  to  buy  up  the  prop- 
erty of  all  inhabitants  who  wish  to  emigrate  to  Greece 
from  the  section  which  would  be  ceded  to  her.  At  the 
same  time  a  commission  would  make  it  possible  for  the 
Greek  population  within  the  limits  of  Bulgaria  to  be  ex- 
changed against  the  Bulgarian  pojnilation  within  the  Greek 
boundaries;  the  property  of  these  populations  to  be  bought 
up  by  the  respective  states.  This  exchange  and  the  pur- 
chase of  the  property  would  be  made  by  commissions  com- 
posed of  five  members,  of  wliom  England,  France.  Russia, 
Greece  and  Bulgaria  should  each  name  one;  the  execution 
of  all  these  conditions  to  precede  our  actual  surrender  of 
Cavalla. 

An  ethnological  segregation  could  thus  definitely  be  ac- 
complished and  the  idea  of  a  Balkan  confederation  real- 
ized; in  any  case,  an  alliance  of  these  states  with  mutual 
guarantees  could  be  concluded  which  would  permit  them  to 
devote  themselves  to  the  working  out  of  their  economic  and 
otlier  developments  without  being  occupied  almost  ex- 
clusively from  the  beginning  by  the  necessity  of  strength- 
ening themselves  in  a  military  way.  At  the  same  time, 
as    partial    compensation    for    this    concession,    we    should 

553 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

demand,  in  the  event  that  Bulgaria  should  extend  her 
territory  beyond  the  Vardar,  that  the  Doiran-Ghevgheli 
sector  ^  be  conceded  to  us  m  order  to  acquire,  opposed  to  Bul- 
garia, a  solid  northern  frontier — deprived  as  we  should  be 
of  the  excellent  frontier  which  separates  us  from  her  on  the 
east. 

Unfortunately,  owing  to  the  Bulgarian  greed,  it  is  not  at 
all  certain  that  these  concessions — considerable  as  they  are 
— will  satisfy  Bulgaria  and  secure  her  cooperation.  But 
at  least  the  aid  of  Rumania  should  be  assured;  without  her, 
our  entrance  into  the  struggle  becomes  too  perilous. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  add  that  we  should  ask  of  the  Triple 
Entente  a  promise  of  the  necessary  funds  to  meet  the  ex- 
penses of  the  war,  and  to  facilitate  the  purchase,  at  her 
markets,  of  the  required  military  equipment. 

My  belief  that  we  should  accept  the  invitation  given  us 
to  take  part  in  the  war  is  founded  equally  upon  other  con- 
siderations. Certainly  in  remaining  impassive  spectators 
of  the  struggle,  we  do  not  run  merely  the  dangers  I  have 
just  enumerated  which  the  eventual  crushing  of  Serbia  would 
create  for  us.  Even  if  the  plan  of  a  new  attack  on 
Serbia  were  abandoned,  Austria  and  Germany,  returning 
to  the  principal  theaters  of  war, — Poland  and  Flanders — 
and  emerging  from  them  victorious,  once  victorious,  would 
be  able  to  impose  precisely  the  changes  in  the  Balkans  I 
have  just  enumerated  as  being  the  possible  consequences  of 
the  crushing  of  Serbia.  Aside  from  this,  the  fact  of  their 
victory  would  carry  with  it  a  fatal  blow  to  the  independ- 
ence of  all  little  nations,  without  taking  into  considera- 
tion the  immediate  loss  we  should  bear  in  the  forfeiture 
of  the  islands.  And,  finally,  for  this  reason  also:  that  if 
the  war  should  not  end  by  a  definite  victory  of  one  side 
over  the  other,  but  by  a  return  to  the  order  existing  before 
the  war,  the  extermination  of  Hellenism  in  Turkey  would 
come  swiftly  and  inevitably. 

Turkey,  emerging  intact  from  a  war  which  she  has  dared 
make  on  three  great  Powers,  and  emboldened  by  a  feeling 
of  security  which  her  alliance  with  Germany  would  give 

iThis  sector  is  part  of  the  territory  of  Greece's  ally,  Serbia. 

554 


APPENDICES 

her — an  alliance  wliich  obviously  would  be  maintained  in 
the  future,  as  it  serves  the  ends  of  Germany — would  com- 
plete systematically  and  without  delay  the  work  of  the  ex- 
termination of  Hellenism  in  Turkey,  hunting  down,  en 
masse  and  without  restraint,  these  populations  whose  prop- 
erty she  would  confiscate. 

in  this  task  she  would  encounter  no  opposition  from 
Germany;  on  the  contrary,  she  would  be  encouraged  by 
Germany  in  order  that  Asia  Minor,  which  Germany  covtts 
for  the  future,  may  be  rid  of  a  claimant.  The  expulsion 
of  thousands  of  Greeks  living  in  Turkey  would  not  only 
ruin  them,  but  it  would  risk  also  involving  all  Greece  in 
an  economic  catastrophe. 

For  all  these  reasons  I  conclude  that,  under  the  above 
conditions,  our  participation  in  the  war  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary. This  participation  in  the  war,  as  I  said  in  the  be- 
ginning,  holds   also  grave  dangers. 

Opposed  to  the  dangers  to  which  we  should  be  exposed 
in  taking  part  in  the  war,  there  would  predominate  Hope 
— hope,  founded,  as  I  trust,  on  saving  a  great  part  of 
Hellenism  in  Turkey  and  of  creating  a  great  and  powerful 
Greece.  And  even  in  the  event  that  we  fail,  we  should 
have  an  untroubled  conscience  in  having  fought  to  liberate 
our  fellow  countrymen  who  are  still  in  bondage  and  who 
are  exposed  to  the  gravest  dangers;  in  having  fought  also 
for  the  larger  interests  of  humanity  and  the  independence 
of  small  nations,  which  would  be  fatally  imperiled  by 
Germano-Turkish  domination.  And  finally,  even  if  we 
fail,  we  should  keep  the  esteem  and  the  friendship  of  strong 
nations,  of  those  very  nations  who  made  Greece  and  who 
have,  so  many  times  since,  aided  and  sustained  her. 
Whereas  our  refusal  to  discharge  our  obligations  of  alli- 
ance with  Serbia  would  not  only  destroy  our  moral  exist- 
ence as  a  nation  and  expose  us  to  the  dangers  cited  above, 
but  such  a  refusal  would  leave  us  without  friends  and 
without  credit  in  the  future.  Under  such  conditions  our 
national  development  would  become  extremely  perilous. 

I  am  Your  Majesty's  most  obedient  subject, 

El.  Venizelos. 

555 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

January  17,  1915. 

Sire: 

Your  Majesty  has  already  noted  the  answer  of  the  Ru- 
manian Government  to  our  proposition  concerning  Serbia. 
This  answer  means,  I  take  it,  that  Rumania  will  refuse  us 
all  military  cooperation  if  Bulgaria  does  not  participate. 
Even  admitting  that  she  is  satisfied  with  an  official  declara- 
tion of  neutrality  on  the  part  of  Bulgaria  in  event  of 
Greco-Rumanian  cooperation  with  Serbia,  it  is  improbable 
that  a  declaration  of  this  kind  can  be  obtained  from  Bul- 
garia. Moreover,  the  general  staff  itself  does  not  seem 
to  find  an  absolute  guarantee  of  security  in  the  Greco- 
Serbo-Rumanian  cooperation  so  long  as  Bulgaria  holds  her- 
self aloof,  even  after  a  declaration  of  neutrality,  in  the 
evident  intention  of  violating  this  neutrality  so  soon  as  she 
finds  it  to  her  interest  to  do  so. 

This  being  the  state  of  things,  it  is  time,  I  think,  to  face 
resolutely  the  problem  of  the  sacrifices  necessary  to  obtain, 
if  possible,  a  pan-Balkan  alliance  for  a  common  participa- 
tion in  the  war.  An  united  action  of  the  Balkan  states 
would  not  only  assure  them,  in  any  event,  a  local  supremacy 
in  the  northern  theater  of  war,  but  it  would  constitute  also 
a  considerable  aid  to  the  Powers  of  the  Triple  Entente — 
an  aid  which  would  suffice  to  turn  the  balance  definitely  in 
their  favor  in  the  terrible  struggle  which  is  taking  place. ^ 

The  ceding  of  Cavalla  is  certainly  a  very  painful  sacri- 
fice and  my  whole  being  suffers  profoundly  in  counseling  it. 
But  I  do  not  hesitate  to  propose  it  ivhen  I  look  upon  the 
national  compensations  zchich  will  he  assured  to  us  by  this 
sacrifice.  I  have  the  conviction  that  the  concessions  in 
Asia  Minor,  concerning  which  Sir  Edward  Grey  has  made 
overtures,  may,  especially  if  we  impose  certain  sacrifices  re- 

1  These  proposals  were  made  before  Italy's  entry  into  the 
European  conflict.  Yet  even  the  addition  of  Italy  to  the  Allies 
did  not  "turn  the  balance  definitely  in  their  favor."  It  is  doubt- 
ful if  the  creation  of  a  Balkan  block  at  this  time  would  have 
accomplished  as  much  as  did  Italy's  entry,  and  certain  that  the 
possibility  of  friction  between  the  Ball^an  States  would  have 
proved  a  constant  source  of  weakness.  As  King  Constantine 
put  it:    "Venizelos  is  a  visionary.     He  lacks  practical  sense." 

556 


APPENDICES 

pirding  Bulgaria  upon  ourselves,  take  on  such  dimensions 
that  a  Greece  equally  large  and  certainly  no  less  rich  will 
he  added  to  the  Greece  tliat  has  been  doubled  by  two  vic- 
torious wars. 

I  believe  that  if  we  ask  for  the  part  of  Asia  Minor 
which,  situated  to  the  west  of  a  line  starting  from  Cape 
Phincka  in  the  south,  should  follow  the  mountains  of  Al- 
Dag,  Ristet-Dag,  Carli-Dag,  Anamas-Dag  to  reach  Sultan- 
Dag,  and  which  from  there  would  end  at  Kaz-Dag  in  the 
gulf  of  Adramit  (in  case  we  are  not  given  an  outlet  on  the 
Sea  of  Marmora)  there  might  be  considerable  j^robability 
of  our  request  being  accepted.  The  extent  of  this  terri- 
tory exceeds  125,000  square  kilometers;  thus  it  has  the 
same  area  as  Greece  as  she  has  been  doubled  as  a  result 
of  two  wars. 

The  part  that  we  would  cede  (cazas  of  Sali-Chaban, 
Cavalla  and  Drama)  has  not  a  surface  of  over  2,000  square 
kilometres.  It  represents,  consequently,  in  extent  one 
sixtieth  of  probable  compensations  in  Asia  Minor  with- 
out counting  the  compensation  of  Doiran-Ghevgheli,  rchich 
zee  shall  also  demand.^  It  is  true  that  from  the  point  of 
view  of  wealth  the  value  of  the  territory  that  we  are  to 
cede  is  very  great  and  out  of  proportion  to  its  size.  But 
it  is  clear  that  it  cannot  be  compared  in  wealth  to  that  part 
of  Asia  !Minor  the  cession  of  which  we  must  work  for. 
The  matter  of  ceding  Greek  populations  is  certainly  of  the 
greatest  importance.  But  if  the  Greek  inhabitants  of  the 
portion  ceded  may  be  estimated  at  .SO.OOO,  that  of  the  part 
of  Asia  Minor  which  we  should  receive  in  exchange  can  be 
reckoned  at  800,000  souls ;  this  is,  therefore,  twenty-five 
times  superior  to  that  which  we  would  cede. 

Moreover,  as  I  have  already  exposed  in  my  first  mem- 
orandum, the  cession  of  the  district  Drama-Cavalla  will 
take  place  on  the  formal  condition  that  the  Bulgarian  gov- 
ernment buys  up  the  property  of  all  those  who  may  desire 
to  emigrate  from  the  ceded  territory.  And  T  have  no  doubt 
that  all  of  our  compatriots,  to  the  last  one,  after  having  sold 
their  property,  will  emigrate  to  the  New  Greece  which  will 

1  Demand  of  Greece's  own  ally,  Serbia. 

557 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

be  established  in  Asia  Minor  to  swell  and  strengthen  the 
Hellenic  population  there. 

Sire,  under  these  circumstances  I  firmly  believe  that  all 
hesitation  should  be  put  aside.  It  is  doubtful — it  is  im- 
probable that  such  an  occasion  as  this  which  presents  it- 
self to  us  to-day  will  be  oifered  again  to  Hellenism  that 
she  may  render  so  complete  her  national  restoration.  If 
we  do  not  participate  in  the  war,  whatever  may  be  its  issue, 
the  Hellenism  of  Asia  Minor  will  be  definitely  lost  to  us. 
Because  if,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Powers  of  the  Triple  En- 
tente gain  the  victory,  they  will  sliare  among  themselves 
or  with  Italy  both  Asia  Minor  and  the  remainder  of  Tur- 
key. If,  on  the  other  hand,  Germany  and  Turkey  are  vic- 
torious, not  only  will  the  200,000  Greeks  already  driven 
from  Asia  Minor  have  no  longer  any  hope  of  returning  to 
their  homes,  but  the  number  of  those  who  will  be  driven 
out  later  may  take  on  alarming  proportions.  In  any  case 
the  triumph  of  Germanism  will  assure  for  itself  the  absorp- 
tion of  the  whole  of  Asia  IMinor. 

Under  these  conditions,  how  could  we  let  pass  this  oppor- 
tunity furnished  us  by  divine  Providence  to  realize  our 
most  audacious  national  ideals?  An  opportunity  offered 
us  for  the  creation  of  a  Greece  absorbing  nearly  all  the 
territory  where  Hellenism  has  predominated  during  its 
long  and  historic  existence?  A  Greece  acquiring  stretches 
of  most  fertile  land  assuring  to  us  a  preponderance  in  the 
Mgean  Sea? 

Strangely  enough  the  general  staff  does  not  seem  to  be 
greatly  attracted  by  these  considerations.  They  fear,  so 
they  say,  on  the  one  hand  the  difficulty  of  administering 
new  territories  of  so  vast  an  area,  and  on  the  other  hand, 
that  by  taking  part  in  the  war  we  may  exhaust  ourselves 
more  than  the  Bulgarians  who  will  take  advantage  of  our 
weakness  after  the  war  to  attack  us.  None  can  be  blind 
to  the  first  difficulty.  But  I  think  that  it  should  not  lead 
us  to  abandon  the  realization  of  our  national  ideals  on  this 
unique  occasion  which  presents  itself  to  us  to-day.  More- 
over, the  total  of  the  results  realized  by  the  Greek  adminis- 
tration in  Macedonia  proves  that,  in  spite  of  countless  diffi- 

558 


APPENDICES 

cultics,  this  task  is  not  beyond  the  force  of  Greece  and 
Hellenism. 

The  second  fear  is  less  justifiable.  The  Balkan  wars 
have  shown  that  we  do  not  exhaust  ourselves  any  more 
rapidly  tlian  the  Bulgars.  It  is  true,  however,  tliat  dur- 
ino-  a  number  of  years,  until  wc  organize  the  whole  of  our 
military  power  on  the  base  of  the  resources  in  men  which 
the  recruitment  in  Greater  Greece  will  yit.kl,  we  will  find 
ourselves,  in  case  of  war  in  the  Balkan  jicuinsula,  in  the 
necessity  of  retaining  a  part  of  our  forces  in  Asia  Minor 
in  order  to  prevent  a  local  uprising  there — an  uprising 
which  is  not  probable  for,  since  the  Ottoman  Empire  will 
have  completely  ceased  to  exist,  our  subjects  will  be  perfect 
and  law-abiding  citizens.  However,  the  armed  force  neces- 
sary to  this  end  will  be  furnished  very  rapidly  by  the  Hel- 
lenic population  itself  of  Asia  Minor.  And  then,  it  is  easy 
to  guard  ourselves  against  any  Bulgarian  ])cril  by  establisli- 
ing  for  this  period  a  formal  understanding  with  the  Pow- 
ers of  the  Triple  Entente  in  virtue  of  which  tliey  will  aid 
us  in  case  Bulgaria  should  attack  us  in  this  interval. 

In  my  opinion,  even  without  such  an  understanding,  we 
would  have  nothing  to  fear  from  Bulgaria  after  the  suc- 
cessful issue  of  a  war  in  which  we  should  have  taken  part 
in  common.  Bulgaria  herself  would  be  oecuj^icd  by  the  or- 
ganization of  the  new  provinces  which  she  would  have  ac- 
quired. If  she  be  blinded  to  the  ])oint  of  wishing  to  at- 
tack us,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Serbia  has  toward  us  an 
obligation  of  alliance  and  motives  of  gratitude. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  cession  of  Cavalla 
does  not  make  it  in  any  way  certain  that  Bulgaria  will  con- 
sent to  leave  her  neutrality  to  cooperate  with  us  and  the 
Serbs.  It  is  probable  that  she  may  insist  either  upon  ob- 
taining these  concessions  in  cxcliange  merely  for  her  neu- 
trality, or  that  she  may  demand  that  this  cession  be  made 
to  her  now  before  the  end  of  the  war  and,  consequently, 
whatever  may  be  the  issue  of  the  war. 

We  cannot  accept  any  of  tliese  conditions.  If  our 
participation  in  the  war  is  checked  in  consequence  of  Bul- 
garia's attitude,  we  shall  have  kept  unbroken  the  friend- 
shij)  and  the  sympathy  of  the  Powers  of  the  Triple  Entente. 

559 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

And  if  we  may  not  hope  for  such  concessions  as  we  mig;ht 
have  obtained  in  exchange  for  participation  in  the  war, 
we  may  at  least  expect  with  certainty  that  our  interests 
will  have  the  sympathetic  support  of  these  Powers  and 
that  we  shall  not  be  deprived  of  their  financial  aid  after 
the  war. 

I  should  add,  moreover,  that  the  train  of  events,  as 
well  as  the  proposition  that  has  been  made  to  accord  to  us 
in  Asia  Minor  large  territorial  concessions,  demonstrates, 
without  any  doubt,  that  the  vitality  wliich  new  Greece  has 
sliown  has  attracted  to  her  the  confidence  of  certain  Pow- 
ers who  look  upon  her  as  an  important  factor  of  reform  in 
the  Orient,  while  the  Turkish  Empire  is  in  process  of  dis- 
integration. 

The  support  of  these  Powers  will  give  us  all  the  financial 
and  diplomatic  means  of  facing  the  difficulties  inevitable 
in  such  a  sudden  aggrandizement.  Greece,  confident  of 
this  support,  can  follow  courageously  the  new  and  ad- 
mirable road  that  opens  out  before  her.  Fortunately,  Your 
Majesty  is  in  the  full  vigor  of  age,  not  only  to  create  by 
his  sword  a  greater  Greece,  but  also  to  consolidate  this 
military  achievement  by  a  perfect  political  organization  of 
the  new  State  and  to  transmit  to  Your  heir,  when  the  time 
comes,  a  finished  work,  superhumanly  great  and  such  as  it 
has  been  given  to  few  princes  to  accomplish. 

I  am  Your  Majesty's  most  humble  servant, 

El.   Venizelos. 


mo 


APPEXDIX  2 

CERTAIN  ARTICLES  OF  THE  GREEK 
CONSTITUTION 

Article  21.  All  authorities  emanate  from  the  nation 
and  are  exercised  in  the  manner  laid  down  in  the  Constitu- 
tion. 

Art.  22.  The  legislative  power  is  exercised  by  tlie  King 
and  by  the  Chamber. 

Art.  23.  The  right  of  proposing  laws  belongs  to  the 
Chamber  and  to  the  King,  who  exercises  this  right  tlirougli 
his  ministers. 

Art.  31.  The  King  appoints  and  dismisses  his  minis- 
ters. 

Art.  32.  The  King  is  the  supreme  head  of  the  State; 
the  Commander  of  the  military  and  naval  forces.  He  de- 
clares war,  contracts  treaties  of  peace,  alliance,  and  com- 
merce; and  communicates  them  to  the  Chamber  with  the 
necessary  explanations  as  soon  as  the  interests  of  the  State 
allow.  But  commercial  treaties  and  all  treaties  which  con- 
tain concessions  concerning  wliich,  according  to  other  ar- 
ticles of  the  Constitution  nothing  can  be  decided  without 
a  law,  or  which  impose  personal  burdens  ui)on  Greek  citi- 
zens, have  no  validity  without  their  ratification  by  the 
Chamber. 

Art.  33.  No  cession  or  exchange  of  territory  can  be 
made  without  a  law.  Tlie  secret  articles  of  any  treaty 
may  not  invalidate  the  articles  made  public. 

Art.  34.  The  King  awards,  in  accordance  with  tlie  law, 
all  military  and  naval  ranks  and  appoints  and  dismisses, 
likewise  in  pursuance  of  the  law,  all  public  oHicials,  save 
when  otherwise  provided  by  law.   .  .   . 

Art.  99.  No  foreign  army  may  be  admitted  to  the 
Greek  service  witliout  a  special  law,  nor  may  it  sojourn  in 
or  pass  through  the  State. 

561 


APPENDIX  3 

AJ^  INTERVIEW  WITH  KING  CONSTANTINE 

From  The  New  York  Times,  June  14,  1917 

By  Adamantios  Th.  Polyzoides 

When  Mr.  Polyzoides  was  in  Athens  last  year  he 
obtained,  as  correspondent  of  The  New  York  Times, 
the  following  interview  with  King  Constantine,  which 
he  was  pledged  not  to  publish  except  by  special  per- 
mission of  the  King  or  in  the  event  that  he  died  or 
was  deposed.  His  dethronement  by  the  Entente  now 
meets  the  condition. 

Copyright,  1917,  by  The  New  York  Times  Co. 

It  was  a  few  days  after  the  burning  down  of  the  royal 
villa  of  Dekelia  and  its  beautiful  forest  on  July  14,  1916, 
that  I  was  permitted  to  meet  his  Majesty,  having  a  few 
days  before  expressed  my  desire  to  see  him  previous  to  my 
return  to  America.  King  Constantine  received  me  in  his 
study,  where  a  few  moments  earlier  he  was  in  consultation 
with  his  Premier,  who  then,  as  now,  was  Alexander  Zaimis. 

I  found  him  in  the  best  of  spirits,  as  if  his  life  had 
never  been  endangered  in  the  midst  of  that  conflagration 
in  which  his  immediate  suite  and  nearly  two  score  soldiers 
lost  their  lives  while  fighting  the  flames  surrounding  his 
estate  from  every  side,  and  as  if  he  was  not  saved  as  by 
miracle  twice  in  fourteen  months. 

"It  was  terrible,  and  yet  a  most  remarkable  experience, 
being  in  the  midst  of  that  hell,"  the  King  said  in  answer 
to  my  inquiry.  "Yet  I  never  felt  any  fear  for  my  life;  in 
fact,  I  never  cared  much  for  it,"  he  went  on  with  a  smile. 
"I  never  cared  much  for  my  throne,  either,  and  if  I  per- 
sist in  keeping  both,  I  do  it  for  the  sake  of  Greece,  and 
for  the  sake  of  the  Greek  people,  the  only  ones  for  which 

562 


APPENDICES 

I  care,  and  which  are  dear  to  my  heart.  I  am  saying 
this  not  because  I  want  to  boast  of  my  love  for  Hellas, 
but  in  order  to  let  my  people  know  my  sentiments,  as  I 
know  their  feelings  toward  me. 

"Yes,  the  Greek  people  love  their  King,  and  if  I  ever 
lose  my  throne,  it  will  not  be  because  the  Greek  pcojjle 
will  take  it  from  me.  I  know  it  and  I  want  America 
to  know  it  on  the  day  when  this  may  possibly  happen. 
I  know  that  it  is  the  Entente,  and  not  tlie  Greek  people, 
that  will  have  none  of  me.  This  effort  to  oust  me  is 
just  as  old  as  my  first  objection  to  the  Dardanelles  expe- 
dition; it  dates  from  the  day  when,  in  the  French  Lega- 
tion of  Athens,  the  Entente  Ministers  assembled  and  talked 
about  the  possible  changes  in  the  line  of  succession  to 
the  Greek  throne,  while  everybody,  myself  included,  was 
despairing  of  my  life,  threatened  by  pleurisy,  a  year  ago. 
I  did  not  die  then,  and  I  did  not  perisli  in  tlie  fire  of 
Dekelia,  but  in  all  this  time  the  ill-feeling  of  the  Entente 
against  me  has  never  relaxed. 

"Well,  I  could  be  the  most  popular  of  all  Kings,  as 
far  as  the  Entente  Allies  are  concerned,  had  I  joined 
in  their  struggle  and  led  my  people  to  ruin  and  destruc- 
tion. Of  course,  I  would  lose  nothing,  no  matter  how 
great  the  sacrifices  and  the  misery  of  my  people,  be- 
cause such  is  the  lot  of  Kings.  The  Belgians  and  the 
Serbians  may  be  destroyed,  but  their  Kings  lose  nothing 
of  their  former  comforts.  I  would  be  comfortably  in- 
stalled wherever  the  Greek  capital  was  transferred  after 
Greece  was  reduced  to  nothingness  following  a  crushing 
defeat." 

"Would  it  be  defeat  necessarily.^"  I  asked. 

"There  would  be  something  worse  than  all  the  defeats 
the  Greek  race  has  suffered  since  it  lias  been  on  earth," 
the  King  answered  gravely.  "No,  Greece  could  not  fare 
any  better  than  any  other  small  nation  has  fared  on 
entering  this  war.  We  simply  could  not  witlistand,  for 
longer  than  a  fortnight,  the  blows  of  tlie  Austro-German 
and  Turco-Bulgarian  troops  laundied  against  us.  And 
the  Greek  Army  once  destroyed,  all  the  ])<)wers  of  the 
universe   could    not   save   the   Greek   race    from    a    Turco- 

563 


APPENDICES 

Bulgarian  onslaught,  carried  in  full  force  against  our 
noncombatant  populations  in  European  and  Asiatic  Greece, 
with  the  whole  world  simply  looking  on. 

"This  is  the  fate  that  threatens  the  Hellenic  people 
when  they  enter  the  war,  and  from  this  fate  I  want 
to  save  them,  sacrificing  for  this,  if  need  be,  not  only 
my  throne,  but  my  life  as  well.  I  want  to  save  the  Greek 
nation  from  a  catastrophe  from  which  it  will  never  re- 
cover, and  this  catastrophe,  that  I  can  see  every  day 
looming  larger  and  larger,  is  this  terrible  world  war.  I 
may  lose  in  my  effort,  but  I  shall  know  to  the  end  of 
my  days  that  I  did  my  duty  as  a  man,  a  Greek,  and  a 
King.  I  shall  know  that  I  kept  my  oath  to  my  God, 
to  my  country,  and  to  history,  which,  like  God,  is 
eternal." 

"To  force  Greece  into  the  war  was  the  easiest  way 
to  my  personal  glory  and  benefit,"  continued  his  Majesty 
after  a  slight  pause,  "but  I,  the  absolutist,  the  autocrat, 
the  believer  in  the  divine  right  of  kings,  as  my  op- 
ponents are  prone  to  call  me,  was  held  down  and  nailed 
down  to  a  pacifist  policy  simply  because  all  the  people 
of  Greece  who  will  do  the  fighting  when  war  comes  are 
against  this  war,  and  against  sacrificing  themselves  in 
a  vain  effort,  which  will  do  nobody  good. 

"They  call  this  struggle  a  fight  for  the  rights  of  the 
weak  and  the  oppressed,  and  yet  they  want  us  to  be- 
lieve that  Greece  is  neither  weak  nor  oppressed,  when 
in  fact  we  fare  little  better  than  Belgium.  Is  it  in  order 
to  uphold  our  constitutional  liberties?  Rubbish!  The 
present  war  takes  little  account  of  such  small  matters. 
Your  liberty  and  your  constitution  count  only  when  they 
are  of  any  use  to  the  Entente  in  a  material  way.  If  your 
Parliament  stands  for  war,  it  is  good;  if  it  votes  for 
peace,  it  is  merely  a  band  of  crooks  in  the  pay  of  Ger- 
many. These  high-sounding  names  for  lofty  ideals  and 
popular  liberties  have  value  only  when  they  serve  to 
rouse  a  people  and  march  them  to  the  slaughter  house 
called  nowadays  'the  front.'  If  for  the  same  ideals 
people  want  to  sit  quiet  and  mind  their  own  business, 
then  they  are  nothing." 

564* 


APPENDICES 

"But  there  are  those  Avho  maintain  that  Greece,  in- 
stead of  sitting  quiet  and  minding  her  own  business,  has 
been  openly  favorable  to  the  Kaiser  and  Germany?"  I 
remarked. 

"You  are  a  newspaperman,"  his  Majesty  retorted,  "and 
you  know  how  easily  you  can  give  life  to  a  lie,  when 
you  have  at  your  disposal  all  the  means  necessary  to 
spread  it,  while  the  party  which  is  mainly  affected  by 
your  lie  is  gagged,  and  the  freedom  of  speech  and  the 
benefit  of  a  hearing  are  denied  to  it.  Greece  thought  she 
was  entitled  to  have  a  divided  sympathy  in  this  war. 
Still  the  general  feeling  was  never  in  favor  of  the  Ger- 
mans, just  as  the  general  feeling,  although  favoring  the 
Entente,  was  never  in  favor  of  committing  suicide  for 
the  sake  of  the  Allies.  I  spoke  on  this  score  many  a 
time,  and  public  opinion  in  and  out  of  Greece  knows  my 
views." 

"Whose  victim  then  is  Greece?"  I  asked. 

"Originally  she  was  the  victim  of  the  allied  Ministers 
in  Athens,"  King  Constantine  replied.  "The  Minister 
of  France  (M.  Guillemin)  and  the  Minister  of  Great 
Britain  (Sir  Francis  Elliot)  are  acting  more  as  Venizelist 
district  leaders  than  as  representatives  of  the  best  in- 
terests of  their  own  countries.  They  want  simply  to  put 
M.  Venizelos  in  the  place  where  I  am  now  sitting.  Is 
tliis  wanted  by  their  own  Government?  I  have  no  means 
of  knowing,  but  I  doubt  it.  The  Ministers  of  Russia 
(Prince  Demidoff)  and  of  Italy  (Count  Bosdari)  pro- 
fess to  be  friendly  to  me  personally,  but  they  naturally 
cannot  be  very  friendly  to  the  cause  of  Hellas.  Of  the 
neutral  Ministers,  some  are  absolutely  noncommittal,  but 
the  rest  are  Venizelists,  and  I  am  sorry  to  add  that  even 
the  Minister  of  the  United  States  (Garret  Droppers) 
must  be  included  in  the  latter  category. 

"On  the  other  hand,  for  I  want  to  be  fair,  I  think 
that  an  American  Minister  who  is  hostile  to  a  King  as 
a  matter  of  principle  is  more  popular  in  his  own  country. 
Think  of  a  Royalist  American !  I  do  not  expect  that, 
of  course,  but  I  thirst  for  a  square  deal,  and  this 
has  not  been  given  to  me  from  America,  except  in  very 

565 


APPENDICES 

few  instances.  People  there  seem  to  believe  more  readily 
their  cousins  across  the  Atlantic  than  they  do  the  King 
of  the  Hellenes.  This  is  natural  as  long  as  Athens  com- 
municates with  America  through  London.  But  the  most 
curious  thing  of  all  is  that  whenever  I  happen  to  speak 
my  mind  to  an  unprejudiced  American  I  always  find 
him  on  my  side." 

We  then  spoke  of  the  war.  The  King  seemed  tired  of 
the  eternal  discussion  of  that  subject.  Still  when  I  asked 
him  what  he  believed  to  be  the  possible  outcome  of  the 
struggle,  he  answered: 

"Germany  will  not  be  defeated,  and  the  Entente  will 
not  be  defeated.  This  thing  is  bound  to  drag  on  for 
years,  and  peace  will  only  be  signed  when  all  the  bel- 
ligerents reach  the  end  of  their  resources.  This  peace 
will  not  take  into  account  the  small  nationalities;  neither 
will  it  establish  permanent  rules  of  righteousness  and 
justice.  He  who  at  the  end  of  the  war  will  be  stronger 
than  the  others  will  get  the  best  terms,  and  the  weak 
and  small  will  have  to  pay,  as  has  been  the  case  always 
since  the  world  existed. 

"I  am  not  saying  this  for  Greece  alone;  the  rule  applies 
to  every  little  country  which  can  neither  get  free  nor 
live  by  itself.  Belgium  and  Serbia  when  freed  will  owe 
their  liberty  to  some  one  else,  and  he  will  get  the  best 
of  their  freedom,  as  is  the  case  with  Navarino  and  Greece. 
This  is  the  reason  why  I  want  Greece  to  stay  out  of  the 
war,  and  the  Greek  people  are  clever  enough  to  view 
the  situation  in  the  same  light. 

"Another  thing  that  I  want  you  to  bear  always  in 
mind  is  that  the  Entente  Powers  have  always  been,  they 
are  to-day,  and  they  will  be  in  the  future,  more  pro- 
Bulgar  than  they  have  ever  been  pro-Greek.  And  this 
is  another  reason  why  we  are  neutral  at  this  time.  Bul- 
garia to-day,  even  when  fighting  against  the  Allies,  has 
more  friends  in  London  and  Paris  than  Greece  has  had 
since  the  days  of  Hugo  and  Beranger.  It  is  a  case  of 
incurable  Bulgaritis,  this,  from  which  all  the  Entente 
Powers  are  suffering.  Unfortunately  I  can  do  nothing 
in  this  case,"  the  King  concluded  laughingly. 

566 


APPENDICES 

He  had  kept  me  nearly  an  hour;  the  Minister  of  War, 
General  Callaris,  was  waiting  to  see  him;  the  Serbian 
Minister,  Mr.  Balougditch,  was  also  announced;  I  rose  to 
take  leave  of  his  Majesty.  He  likewise  rose,  a  towering 
figure  over  six  feet  tall. 

"When  do  you  expect  to  sail  for  America?"  he  asked 
me. 

"In  two  days,"  I  answered. 

"Do  you  want  to  ask  me  any  other  question?" 

"Yes,  your  Majesty,"  I  replied,  and  my  question  was 
this:  "What  shall  I  tell  people  when  they  ask  me  why 
the  fort  of  Rupel  was  delivered  to  the  Germans  and  the 
Bulgars?" 

"Tell  them,"  his  Majesty  said  gravely,  "that  the  salva- 
tion of  Greece  is  immensely  more  precious  than  all  the 
Rupels  of  the  world.  In  fact,  the  salvation  of  Greece  is 
more  precious  than  the  Greek  throne,  and  the  life  itself 
of   Constantine." 


667 


APPENDIX  4 

HOW  "RECRUITS"  TO  THE  "ANTI-BULGARIAN 
ARMY"  WERE  OBTAINED 

In  regard  to  the  activities  of  the  revolutionists  who  have 
employed  the  funds  lent  them  by  tlie  Entente  pov^^ers  to 
endeavor  to  overthrow  the  constitutional  government  of 
Greece,  a  committee  of  the  Mussulman  members  of  the 
Greek  Congress  waited  upon  the  American  minister  in 
Athens  en  November  24,  1916,  and  presented  to  him  the 
following  list  of  acts  committed  against  the  Mussulman 
citizens  of  Greece,  loyal  to  the  constitutional  government, 
by  revolutionary  agents: 

Six  thousand  Mussulmans  of  Kailar  have  been  carried  off 
by  force  and  compelled  to  do  hard  labor  on  the  construction 
of  roads.  Two  thousand  of  these  Mussulmans  have  dis- 
appeared. 

The  Mussulmans  of  Vlevitsa  were  required  to  furnish  60 
Turkish  pounds  ransom.  Tlie  day  after  this  demand  was 
made,  the  stock  of  oats  of  the  village  was  seized  and  car- 
ried off,  together  with  the  mules  belonging  to  the  villagers. 
The  village  priest  and  six  of  the  inhabitants,  who  refused  to 
pay  the  sum  demanded,  were  put  to  death. 

At  the  village  of  Tzartzilar,  near  Cazani,  the  mayor  of 
the  village  was  killed  while  at  work  in  his  fields,  and  his 
horses  stolen. 

Each  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  district  of  Kailer  has  been 
forced  to  supply  the  Allies  with  six  sheep  or  other  food 
animals. 

The  horses,  mules  and  donkeys,  the  stocks  of  wheat  and 
the  food  animals  of  about  seventy  villages  between  Gram- 
maticovo,  Katranitza  and  Fiorina  have  been  requisitioned 
without  payment. 

At  Vodena  18  Mussulmans  were  arrested,  and  those  who 
568 


APPENDICES 

were  young  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  village  were  sent 
to  Kaimaktehalen  to  be  used  in  construction  work. 

At  Karatzova,  between  four  and  live  thousand  Mussul- 
mans were  forced  to  work  on  construction  work,  unpaid. 
The  plow  animals  and  stocks  of  seed  wheat  were  con- 
fiscated. Each  day  ten  Mussulmans  were  arrested  and  sent 
to  Saloniki. 

At  Verria,  the  Mussulmans  were  forced  to  serve  in  the 
revolutionary  army  or  to  pay  $20  to  buy  themselves  off. 
One  Mussulman,  Riaz-Ahmet,  was  killed. 

In  the  Chalcidic  peninsula  conditions  have  been  sliown, 
upon  official  investigation,  to  have  been  even  worse.  The 
Chalcidic  peninsula  is  under  the  military  control  of  the 
Allied  Orient  armies. 

September  7,  a  recruiting  officer  of  the  revolutionary 
movement  arrested  and  imprisoned  Dr.  A.  Zafiropoulos; 
Ch.  Zographos  and  G.  Gerozaho,  farmers;  Z.  Gerozaho, 
public  accountant;  Demetrios  Papoulis,  a  merchant,  and 
others. 

September  10,  they  put  to  death  at  Calatists  B.  Kym- 
ourtzis,  Sarafianos,  from  whom  they  took  100  pounds, 
Demetrios  Stinys,  and  his  wife.  Nicholas  Samaras  was 
first  mortally  wounded  and  then  had  his  skull  beaten  in 
with  the  butt  of  a  rifle;  C.  Cataeolo  was  wounded  in  the 
feet;  A.  Cataeolo  and  Cararaessalas  wounded,  mortally,  in 
the  head;  Demetrios  Safourla  in  the  left  arm,  and  A. 
Caratzina  badly  wounded  in  the  right  leg. 

At  Vassilika  the  justice  of  the  peace,  Mr.  Nicholas 
Didachos,  Sacoudis  and  ten  others  were  arrested  and  sent 
to  Saloniki  where  they  were  imprisoned.  In  the  same  vil- 
lage, the  mother  and  two  sisters  of  Hercules  Patica,  who 
had  escaped,  were  imprisoned  in  his  stead.  The  village 
priest,  Papajoannou,  and  all  his  family  were  first  tortured 
and  then  imprisoned  for  aiding  the  escape  of  Patica. 
They  burned  the  furniture  of  G.  Tetradis's  two  sisters, 
because  Tetradis  had  also  escaped  their  "recruiting." 

September  19,  the  revolutionists  at  Polygro  forced  Greg- 
ory Sinopoulos  to  sing  his  own  requiem.  Then  they  hanged 
him. 

At  Vavados,  they  arrested  member  of  Congress  Trago- 

569 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

nos,  Ath.  Cotsanos,  Basil  Cianos,  G.  Cianios,  and  the 
women  of  tlieir  families,  and  then  set  the  village  afire. 
They  shot  Stavros  Cardalias.  ■       . 

Early  in  October  at  Portaria  they  arrested  three  veterans 
of  the  late  wars,  and  while  taking  them  to  prison,  shot  them 
in  the  back. 

At  Ormylie,  they  executed  Police  Commissioner  Patri- 
archeas,  cut  off  his  head  and  paraded  it  through  the  neigh- 
boring villages  to  terrorize  the  inliabitants. 

On  October  18,  Lefkis,  a  lieutenant  in  the  revolutionary 
army,  accompanied  by  a  number  of  soldiers  of  the  Na- 
tional Defense,  or  former  policemen,  came  to  the  village 
of  Stavros  in  the  region  of  Vrasna,  in  Chalcidic,  for  the 
purpose  of  "recruiting."  He  published  a  proclamation 
and  waited  results.  But  he  waited  in  vain.  Not  a  single 
volunteer  was  forthcoming.  All  the  reservists  of  the  vil- 
lage had  taken  refuge  in  the  neighborhood,  determined  to 
resist  any  attempt  at  arrest  on  the  part  of  the  revolution- 
ists. Lefkis,  seeing  that  no  result  came  of  his  proclama- 
tion and  resolved  not  to  give  up,  appealed  to  the  priest  of 
Stavros,  a  man  seventy  years  old,  and  ordered  him  to  turn 
over  the  recalcitrants  to  the  revolutionists  without  delay. 
The  priest,  without  a  tremor,  answered  the  demand  by  this 
simple  phrase: 

"The  reservists  will  not  enlist  until  the  king  calls  them." 

Lefkis,  greatly  enraged,  ordered  his  men  to  hang  the 
aged  priest  immediately,  to  set  fire  to  his  house,  and  to 
burn  his   family  alive. 

Despite  this  not  a  single  sound  recruit  was  procured ! 

On  October  20,  another  band  of  revolutionists,  on  "re- 
cruiting duty,"  after  having  in  vain  brought  disorder  into 
the  villages  of  Baltja,  Dremiglava,  Langada,  Aivati,  mis- 
treating everywhere  the  families  of  reservists,  suddenly  en- 
countered the  reservists  and  opened  fire  upon  them  with  a 
loss  of  one  killed  and  two  wounded.  To  avenge  these 
losses,  the  chief  of  the  revolutionists,  ex-Major  Diamanto- 
poulos,  accompanied  by  sixty  men,  attacked  Langada  the 
following  day,  took  possession  of  it  without  difficulty,  and 
brutally  beat  Mayor  Papageorgiou  and  Elie  Bossinaki  be- 
cause   they    had   not    furnished   any    "volunteers"    to   the 

570 


.    APPENDICES 

National  Defense.  Before  leaving  the  town  the  com- 
mander had  six  houses  set  on  fire,  and  put  to  death  tliree 
Turks  whom  he  found  on  his  way  and  whom  his  men  had 
taken  pains  to  relieve  of  their  money  before  executing 
them. 

The  band  continued  to  go  through  various  villages  on  its 
"round  of  recruitment"  without  being  able  to  recruit  any- 
body. Everywhere  that  it  passed,  the  unfortunate  vil- 
lagers were  maltreated  and  their  houses  burned  and  pil- 
laged. .  Near  Dremiglava  the  revolutionists  set  fire  to  160 
barns,  destroying  an  enormous  stock  of  bran  and  a  great 
number  of  beasts  of  burden.  Here,  too,  six  houses  were 
reduced  to  ashes.  .  .  . 

The  English,  who  passed  through  the  district  of  the 
"anti-Bulgarian  action"  of  the  "National  Movement"  esti- 
mated the  damage  done  at  about  $160,000.^ 

On  November  2,  1916,  it  was  learned  in  Athens  that  ten 
loyalist  inhabitants  of  Castoria  had  been  arrested  in  that 
town  by  the  Venizelists.  Three  were  reported  to  have 
been  shot  out  of  hand  on  a  charge  of  espionage;  the  re- 
mainder were  tried  by  "court  martial."  Similar  measures 
were  taken  in  ahnost  every  border  town  to  "stamp  out 
royalist  sentiment,"  as  Mr.  Venizelos  put  it. 

The  ministry  of  foreign  aff'airs  in  Athens  also  officially 
reports  as  follows: 

On  March  2,  1917,  twenty  French  cavalrymen  under 
command  of  an  officer  suddenly  arrived  at  tlie  Zidani 
monastery,  near  tlie  village  of  Scrvia.  They  imprisoned  the 
aged  mother  of  the  superior  of  tlie  monastery,  her  maid- 
servant and  her  nephew.  They  arrested  Su})erior  Caliniko, 
four  monks,  and  the  notary  of  Scrvia,  who  had  sought 
refuge  thereafter  having  been  hunted  out  of  his  office  and 
out  of  the  town  hall  in  Servia.  These  six  persons,  the 
superior,  the  four  monks  and  the  notary,  were  sliot  out  of 
hand  in  the  courtyard  of  the  monastery  without  trial  of  any 
kind.      Afterwards  tlie  soldiers  pillaged  the  monastery. 

Other  French  dctacliments  killed  three  residents  of  the 
village  of  Lougani,  and  two  of  the  village  of  (Irapis. 
These  acts,  committed  in  the  "  neutral  zone  "  in  wliieJi  the 

1  "Hulhtin  Ilcllcnique,"  No.  4,  NovciiiIxt  H,  ]*.)](). 

571 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

French  have  assumed  the  respor  ibility  of  maintaining 
order,  have  aroused  the  greatest  indignation  throughout  the 
whole  of  Greece. 

The  Greek  government  has  protested  vigorously  against 
these  unheard-of  acts,  committed  on  the  threshold  of  Thes- 
saly.  Measures  are  being  taken  to  prevent  any  acts  of  re- 
taliation by  the  local  population  which  might  serve  as  an 
excuse  to  the  foreign  troops  to  invade  the  territory  whose 
integrity  was  guaranteed  by  the  Entente  note  of  January 
8,  1917. 


572 


APPENDIX  5 

ITALIAN  OPINION  ON  THE  ALLIED  POLICY  IN 
GREECE 

RASTIGNAC  IN  "LA  TRIBUNA,"  OCTOBER  10,  1916 

Let  us  proclaim  aloud  the  truth  even  tliough  it  be  dis- 
agreeable to  the  Allies.  In  this  long  political  crisis,  the 
one  personality  that  counts  at  Athens  is  King  Constantine. 
He,  at  least,  knows  what  he  wants  and  seeks  no  conceal- 
ment of  it,  and  no  one  can  reproach  him  with  being  unde- 
cided or  equivocal  in  his  position. 

It  is  truly  surprising  that  Mr.  Venizelos  to  push  tlirough 
his  program  of  intervention,  to  fulfil  his  anti-governmental 
(if  not  anti-constitutional)  plans,  feels  the  need  of  leaving 
the  capital  of  the  kingdom,  which  is  the  actual  seat  of  the 
Government  of  the  crown  and  wliich  consequently  should  be 
the  most  propitious,  favorable  and  appropriate  place  to  ac- 
complish any  change.  His  departure  from  Athens  is  Vcui- 
zelos's  declaration  of  failure,  and  the  effective  confirmation 
of  the  completeness  of  the  king's  influence  upon  the  public 
opinion  of  the  country.  Venizelos  gone,  Athens  remained 
neither  shaken  nor  agitated;  she  has  kept  her  stubborn  atti- 
tude, faithful  to  the  policy  of  the  king  and  hostile  to  that 
of  the  minister  whom  the  king  had  dismissed  on  three  oc- 
casions without  protest  from  the  people  and  without  being 
called  to  account  by  them  for  it.  .  .  . 

After  all,  what  does  Venizelos  represent  and  what  does 
he  personify  that  the  Allies  should  repose  such  confidence  in 
him?  Not  the  people,  certainly  and  surely  not  the  king, 
from  whom  he  is  widely  separated  and  with  whom  he  is  in 
irreconcilable  contrast.  Thus  we  find  ourselves  outside  the 
field  of  reality  and  consequently  outside  the  field  of  poli- 
tics, which  lives  and  is  nourished  upon  reality.  We  are 
therefore  wrong. 

673 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

The  sedition  of  Venizelos  solves  no  problem;  it  leaves  all 
problems  as  they  vrere,  or  complicates  them  still  further  to 
the  detriment  of  the  Allies.  The  policy  that  the  expedition 
of  Venizelos  represents  is  not  the  policy  that  the  inhabitants 
of  Greece  choose  to-day,  or  which  they  wish  to  see  realized. 
The  authority  and  the  prestige  of  Venizelos  are  gone,  and 
the  opinion  and  the  sentiment  of  the  Greeks  are  hostile  and 
inimical  to  the  leadership  of  Venizelos. 

ARNALDO  FRACCAROLI  IN  THE  "CORRIERE  BELLA 
SERA,"  NOVEMBER  7,  1917 

Every  day  telegrams  from  western  Europe  sent  out  by 
various  important  news-agencies  bring  echoes  from  London 
and  Paris — especially  Paris — of  that  dear  desire  so  long 
and  so  obstinately  nurtured  in  spite  of  everything;  every 
day  the  diplomacy  of  the  Legations  in  Athens — especially 
the  French  Legation — takes  some  steps,  makes  some  move, 
presents  some  note,  with  the  purpose  of  arriving  at  this  re- 
sult: the  intervention  of  Greece  in  the  war — in  spite  of 
everything.  Every  day  sheaves  of  telegrams  from  Saloniki 
and  Athens  recount  ferment  in  Athens  against  the  king  and 
in  favor  of  the  Allies,  agitation  among  Greek  officers  ex- 
asperated at  the  inaction  to  which  the  Government's  policy 
condemns  them,  desertions  in  mass  to  join  the  new  army  of 
national  defense  being  fabricated  at  Saloniki.  They  state 
that  the  king's  government  is  now  no  more  than  a  shadowy 
political  and  diplomatic  fiction  since  all  the  people  of  Greece 
are  trembling  in  body  and  soul  in  sympathy  with  that 
"provisional  government"  which  Mr.  Elephtherios  Venizelos 
founded  in  Crete  and  afterwards  transferred  to  Saloniki ; 
that  King  Constantine  has  on  his  side  only  a  tiny  group  of 
politicians  and  pro-Germans;  that  Mr.  Venizelos  has  with 
him  the  whole  soul  of  the  nation,  the  whole  people,  the  en- 
tire army. 

This  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  is  daily  set  forth  in  the 
telegrams  which  my  excellent  French  and  English  friends 
send  daily  to  their  newspapers. 

Well— shall  I  tell  the  truth  ?  After  all,  it  will  be  better 
for  all  concerned. 

574 


APPENDICES 

The  truth  is  precisely  the  contrary  of  all  of  that!  .  .  . 

King  Constantine  has  a  point  of  view  of  his  own  and 
amongst  the  ideals  of  civilization  for  which  the  Allies  are 
fighting  is  also  that  of  respecting  the  point  of  view  of 
others.  .  .  . 

Has  King  Constantine  really  choked  down  and  trampled 
upon  the  ideals  of  his  people?  Has  he  actually  prevented 
his  people  from  realizing  any  imperious  desire  to  enter  the 
war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies?  Is  it  really  he,  the  king,  who 
does  not  want  war? 

Let  us  for  once  in  a  way  make  a  good  job  of  telling  that 
truth  which  not  one  of  our  Allies  can  be  resigned  to  see 
and  confess :  it  was  never  the  Greek  sovereign  alone  who  did 
not  want  war;  it  was  Greece  itself;  it  was  the  Greek  people. 
The  sovereign  only  interpreted  tlie  sentiment  of  the  ]:)eoplc. 
Far  from  commanding,  or  imposing  his  personal  will.  King 
Constantine  has  only  followed  the  will  of  the  country.  The 
country  did  not  want  war.  What  is  more,  the  country  does 
not  want  war  now. 

Proof  of  this  assertion?  Tliey  are  obvious  and  complete. 
If  the  king  liad  not  interpreted  and  followed  tlie  will  of  the 
])eoi)le,  the  people  would  have  forced  him  to  change  his  mind 
or  would  have  turned  him  out.  When  a  people  wants  M-ar 
really,  nobody  can  prevent  it.  Resistance  only  provokes 
revolution. 

For  some  time  certain  politicians  and  diplomatists — with 
that  deep  subtlety  of  intuition  which  diplomatists  have  dis- 
played in  this  war! — have  nursed  the  hope  that  precisely 
that  might  come  to  pass.  The  interventionist  party,  cap- 
tained by  Venizelos,  maintained  this.  The  interventionists 
are  few,  but  they  made  a  big  noise.  Tliey  shouted  that  the 
whole  people  was  with  them,  that  the  king  was  combatting 
the  will  of  the  people  and  tlie  ideals  of  the  nation.  But 
the  people,  alas !  remained  unimpressed. 

In  the  absence  of  proof  to  the  contrary,  those  who  wished 
to  believe  in  the  desire  for  intervention  of  the  Greek  people, 
believed.  But  now  proof  has  appeared.  Mr.  Venizelos 
himself  has  furnished  it — and  it  has  proved  just  the  op- 

575 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

posite.  For,  to  call  things  by  their  real  names,  the  insur- 
rectional movement  of  Mr.  Venizelos  has  resulted  in  decided 
failure.  To  believe  anything  else,  one  has  to  have  a  large 
dose  of  simplicity  in  one's  makeup. 

Venizelos  is  indisputably  a  very  cunning  man.  He  is 
certainly  one  of  the  cleverest  politicians  of  the  day  in 
managing  events,  especially  in  placing  himself  in  the  light 
that  best  suits  him.  .  .  .  But  he  is  a  manipulator,  not  a 
crusader  or  a  creator.  He  failed  to  understand,  or  at  least 
he  pretended  not  to  understand,  the  real  sentiment  of  the 
people  whom  he  flattered  himself  he  guided.  A  cardinal 
error  for  a  politician!  So  long  as  he  insisted  that  he  had 
the  will  of  the  people  in  his  pocket  and  claimed  to  be  their 
spokesman  and  guide,  there  were  always  some  who  believed 
it.  But  the  moment  he  launched  forth  into  adventure,  that 
he  abandoned  his  flag  and  uttered  his  cry  of  appeal,  then 
the  perfect  and  incontrovertible  proof  was  forthcoming 
that  he  was  backed  by  very  few  people  indeed — exceedingly 
few.  And  that  is  where  Venizelos,  cunning  politician  that 
he  is,  overshot  his  own  cunning:  the  truth  was  revealed  by 
the  negative  result  of  his  departure. 

What  aid  has  the  insurrectional  movement  created  by 
Venizelos  brought  the  Allies?  How  many  combatants  has 
he  been  able  to  gather  together  after  two  years  of  propa- 
ganda and  two  months  of  his  "provisional  government  of 
the  committee  of  national  defense,"  favored  as  he  has  been 
in  every  way — with  ships,  money  and  assistance  of  every 
kind  from  those  who  have  believed  in  him?  Two  thousand 
men!  I  do  not  know  what  delusions  Mr.  Venizelos  har- 
bors; but  the  delusions  of  those  who  still  believe  in  him 
must  be  remarkable ! 

This  curious  Greek  phenomenon  must  be  studied  with  a 
free  mind  and  without  prejudice,  with  the  independent  im- 
partiality of  a  spectator  so  as  not  to  reach  a  false  con- 
clusion through  sympathy  or  antipathy.  Just  one  thought 
in  mind:  the  interest  of  the  Allies.  ...  In  this  way  we 
may  ask  ourselves  what  real  advantage,  what  aid  can  come 
to  the  Allies  from  the  provisional  government  of  Saloniki? 
We  have  seen  what  there  is  to  expect:  in  two  months,  with 
unheard-of  eff"ort,  two  thousand  men !     And  to  arrive  even 

576 


APPENDICES 

at    that    result,    we    have    had    to    pay    out    ten    millions ! 
[Drachmae,  that  is  $2,000,000.00.]   .   '.  . 
The  game  is  not  worth  the  candle ! 

"CORRIERE  DELLA  SERA,"  NOVEMBER  11,  1917 

Greece  does  not  wish  to  enter  the  war  at  any  price.  .  .  . 
The  Greek  people  are  with  the  kinp;  because  the  king  is 
against  war.  The  Greek  army  is  witli  the  king.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  live  in  Athens  a  very  short  time  to  be  convinced 
of  the  admiration,  the  devotion  that  is  accorded  King  Con- 
stantine  by  the  Greek  people.  When  the  king  passes  in 
tlie  street,  lie  is  cheered.  When  he  is  spoken  of.  it  is  always 
with  enthusiasm.  In  theater,  music  hall  or  moving  picture 
show,  the  slightest  allusion  to  the  king  produces  a  delirious 
demonstration. 


577 


APPENDIX  6 

THE  LIBERAL  PARTY  OF  GREECE  AND 
E.  K.  VENIZELOS 

During  the  period  between  Venizelos's  resignation  in 
March  and  his  return  to  power  after  the  elections  of  June 
13,  the  Cretan  visited  Egypt.  Here  he  was  able  to  renew 
ties  with  the  British  government  and  especially  with  the 
Foreign  Office  which  he  had  originally  formed  at  the  Lon- 
don conference  of  1912.  Of  the  close  nature  of  these  ties 
even  the  French  were  not  ignorant.  M.  Gabriel  Hanotaux 
wrote  in  December  1912:^ 

"Engaged  in  a  decisive  game  which  doubtless  will  not  be 
played  again,  will  the  astute  minister  [Venizelos]  try  to 
carry  it  through  at  any  cost ;  and  will  he,  by  a  cunning  veer- 
ing around  towards  certain  Powers,  seek  to  obtain  advan- 
tages which  his  allies'  friendship  awakened  to  suspicion 
might  be  inclined  to  dispute  with  him.''" 

Certain  it  is  that  following  his  return  from  Egypt,  Mr. 
Venizelos's  policy  seemed  suddenly  to  crystallize  in  con- 
formance with  every  desire  of  Great  Britain,  while  Eng- 
land's unquestioning  support  of  the  Cretan  thereafter  did 
not  waver,  even  when  her  allies  found  more  serviceable  to 
the  common  cause  to  support  other  influences  in  the  near 
East  than  Venizelos.  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  this  con- 
nexion that  Mr.  Venizelos's  first  revolutionary  attempt  in 
September,  1916,  was  staged  in  Crete,  under  the  protect- 
ing guns  of  the  British  fleet;  and  that  the  British  naval 
autliorities  landed  men  to  restore  order  under  the  revolu- 
tionary government,  shipping  the  loyal  forces  back  to  old 
Greece. 

i"La  Guerre  des  Balkans  et  I'Europe,"  pp.  203-4. 

578 


APPENDICES 

AX  UNPUBLISHED  STATEMENT  MADE  BY  MR. 
VENIZELOS  IN  DECEMBER,  1915 

The  statement  was  held  at  Mr.  Venizelos's  request  "for 
the  present,"  as  he  did  not  consider  the  time  ripe  for  its  pub- 
lication. Subsequently,  however,  he  gave  an  almost  identi- 
cal statement  to  a  correspondent  of  "Lc  Temps,"  of  Paris, 
using  the  notes  that  had  been  submitted  him  of  this  in- 
terview as  the  basis  for  that  accorded  "Le  Temps." 

"I  do  not  believe  that  King  Constantine  believes  that 
I  or  my  friends  are  plotting  against  him  })ersonally 
or  against  tlie  idea  of  a  constitutional  monarchy  in 
Greece.  And  if  he  should  believe  it,  his  belief  may  lead 
him  into  a  course  of  action  dangerous  to  himself  and 
more  dangerous  still  to  the  normal  development  of 
Greece  in  the  way  of  intelligent  self  government. 

"For  Greece  is  not  ready  for  a  republic  and  mav  not 
be  ready  for  centuries.  I  have  never  believed  a  rcjjub- 
lic  suitable  as  a  government  for  Greece  at  this  epoch 
of  her  history.  I  have  frequently  told  the  king  that 
Greece  will  need  his  family  an  hundred,  perhaps  two 
hundred  years  longer.   .   .   . 

"The  liberal  party  of  Greece  to-day  is  a  one  man 
party.  If  anything  were  to  happen  to  its  leader 
[Venizelos  liimself]  it  would  break  up  and  its  member- 
ship be  affiliated  with  the  old  parties  in  Hellenic  poli- 
tics. If  there  were  to  be  a  republic,  I  should  be  chosen 
President;  but  tliere  would  be  no  one  in  the  liberal 
party  to  succeed  me.  Greece  would  be  in  the  jiosition 
of  Mexico  under  Porfirio  Diaz.  That  was  bad  for 
Mexico  and  it  would  be  even  worse  for  Greece." 

Professor  A.  Andreadcs  of  the  University  of  Athens  on 
the  Liberal  Party  of  Greece,  January,  1917: 

"I  have  been  and  still  am  a  liberal  in  the  English 
sense  or  the  American  sense.  But  the  liberal  jiarly  of 
Greece  as  it  is  constituted  to-day  is  not  a  j)arty  in 
that  sense  at  all.  For  years  I  have  tried  to  secure 
from    Mr.    Venizelos    some    platform,    some    program    of 

579 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

what  tlie  liberal  party  of  Greece  stands  for.  There 
has  never  been  any  such  platform,  except  the  occa- 
sional speeches  of  Mr.  Venizelos  himself,  and  they  do 
not  follow  any  consistent  plan  that  a  political  party 
could  adopt  as  its  program.  The  liberal  party  of 
Greece  stands  for  whatever  Mr.  Venizelos  wants — and 
that  is  not  a  healthy  political  condition  for  any  State 
to  be  in." 

E.  K.  Venizelos  to  General  Corakas,  November  7,  1916: 

"When  I  decided  to  assume  the  responsibility  of  the 
political  division  of  Greece  I  was  not  so  foolish  as  to 
believe  that  our  great  national  and  political  enterprise 
would  immediately  be  crowned  with  success  in  one  or 
even  several  months.  I  knew  very  well  that  the  con- 
fusion in  people's  minds  caused  by  the  audacity  and 
the  suddenness  of  the  enterprise  together  with  the 
prejudice  against  me  that  the  German  agents  since  ex- 
pelled from  the  country  so  long  cultivated  among  the 
reservists,  and  the  demoralization  due  to  so  many  vicissi- 
tudes already  pased  through,  as  well  as  the  blind  and  ab- 
solute idolatry  of  the  people  for  the  person  of  our  famous 
generalissimo,  would  constitute  quite  as  much  of  an  obstacle 
to  our  latest  effort  as  the  military  weaknes  of  the  Allies  in 
tn  the  Balkan  peninsula. 

"But  I  have  never  had  the  habit  of  basing  my  calcula- 
tions upon  purely  logical  and  historical  foundations 
rather  than  upon  the  principle  of  psychological  muta- 
tions, of  general  conceptions  however  indefinite,  and 
on  the  law  of  violence  and  of  domination  which  is 
stronger  than  all  laws,  written  or  unwritten,  real  or 
hypothetical. 

"The  essential  point  of  view  of  your  thoughts  and 
your  actions  must  be  the  absolute  conviction  that  the 
Entente — England  and  France — quite  as  much  as  the 
result  of  serious  representations  on  our  part  as  on  ac- 
count of  their  military  situation  in  the  Balkan  penin- 
sula— a  situation  which  is  becoming  worse  daily — have 
adopted  our  movement  by  substantial  and  active  ap- 
proval   to    such    an    extent    that    our    final    ascendency 

580 


APPENDICES 

over  the  State  of  Athens  [constitutional  Greece]  by 
means  of  the  whole  weight  of  tlie  Entente  whicli  will 
crush  the  artificial  wall  which  separates  us  from  that 
State,  is  only  a  question  of  time  for  us.  I  hope,  more- 
over, that  your  receipt  of  this  letter  will  coincide  with 
the  beginning  of  a  last  and  decisive  action  on  the  part 
of  the  Entente  against  Old  Greece,  an  action  whose 
preparatory  manifestations  will  have  constituted  a  se- 
rious prologue  for  it.^  If  therefore,  through  having 
been  deceived  by  misleading  appearances,  you  are  still 
wavering — you  upon  whom  we  have  based  a  great  part 
of  the  internal  success  of  our  enterprise  against  the 
hostile  State  of  Athens,  you  will  have  to  accept  in 
your  own  mind  and  regard  as  absolutely  certain,  this 
final  conviction  [that  is,  that  the  Entente  have  adopted 
the  Venizelist  cause].  .  .  . 

"What  remains,  after  all,  of  tliis  famous  king  who  is 
still  your  king.'*  Not  even  the  shadow  of  himself! 
His  authority  has  been  reduced  to  shreds  by  one  con- 
cession after  another.  His  war  teeth  have  been  pulled 
one  by  one.  The  specter  of  hunger  and  suffering  is 
already  abroad  throughout  Old  Greece,  and  will  be- 
come still  more  terrible  so  soon  as  a  new  and  very  effi- 
cacious blockade  shall  be  established.-  The  soul  of 
the  people  is  already  at  the  last  limit  of  human  en- 
durance; so  near  is  this  that  one  last  blow — which  is 
imminent — will  suffice  to  finish  it.  .  .  . 

"Here,  I  must  emphasize  that  we  have  already  reached 
a  definite  arrangement  with  the  representatives  of  the 
Entente.  Our  plan  of  supremacy  is  such  that  it  will 
have  been  realized  before  the  moment  wlien,  perhaps,  signs 
of  weakness  on  the  part  of  Rumani.i  shall  have  become  ap- 
parent. That  being  the  case,  why  weaken.''  ...  At  this 
moment  you  should  be  resolved  to  execute  to  the  letter  and 
without  fear  everything  to  the  last  detail  of  what  we  de- 

1  The  letter  was  written  just  a  week  before  Admiral  Dartipc  du 
Kournet's  demand  for  the  surrender  of  tlie  arms  of  (Jreeee. 

-'  A  month  after  the  date  of  this  letter  tiic  Allies  declared,  for- 
mally, their  blockade  of  Greeee,  which  the  Venizelists  put  to  such 
profit  in  extending  their  inuvenient. 

581 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

cided  in  our  private  conferences  and  everything  of  a  compli- 
mentary nature  which  Mr.  R.^  on  my  order  communicated  to 
you  recently.  Success  or  failure  depends  often  upon  one 
minute.  Our  domination  in  the  capital,  even  though  it  be 
achieved  only  in  a  negative  way,  will  bring  us  little  by 
little  to  be  the  masters  of  all  that  remains  of  Old  Greece. 
To  accomplish  this  it  is  necessary  to  get  rid,  at  the  proper 
moment,  of  all  the  persons  designated,  whoever  they  may 
be.     Who  is  not  with  us  is  against  us. 

"This  confidential  letter  must  be  read  and  duly  analyzed 
in  a  secret  meeting  of  all  the  important  persons,  and  you 
must  inform  me  immediately  afterwards  of  your  efforts. 
.  .  .  You  must  emphasize  at  your  meeting  "that  tliis  letter 
embodies  in  final  and  irrevocable  fashion  my  views  as  well 
as  those  of  the  Provisional  government."  ^ 

Notk:  On  its  publication  in  facsimile  in  Athens,  Mr. 
Venizelos  declared  the  above  letter  a  forgery.  I  submit- 
ted it,  however,  to  a  dozen  of  his  closest  friends,  including 
men  who  had  worked  with  him  in  secretarial  capacity  and 
were  familiar  with  his  handwriting.  All  pronounced  its 
authenticity  unquestionable.  One,  still  an  ardent  adherent 
of  the  Cretan,  said:  "It  is  not  only  Venizelos's  hand- 
writing, it  is  his  own  peculiar  style.  It  is  the  soul  of 
Venizelos  laid  bare." 

EXTRACTS  FROM  AN  INTERVIEW  GIVEN  BY  VENI- 
ZELOS TO  A  CORRESPONDENT  OF  THE  "CHICAGO 
DAILY  NEWS,"  DECEMBER  30,   1916 

We  are  too  busy  fighting  the  Bulgars  to  make  war  on  our 
fellow  countrymen  now. 

1  Ex-Minister  Repoulis? 

2  Venizelos  entrusted  the  letter  to  ex-Deputy  Revinthis,  one  of 
his  followers,  to  be  delivered  by  hand  to  General  Corakas. 
Revinthis,  aware  of  the  contents  of  the  letter  demanded  $100,000 
of  Mayor  Bennakis  of  Athens  not  to  turn  the  letter  over  to  the 
judicial  authorities.  The  ringleaders  of  the  revolutionary  plot 
offered  Revinthis  $100,000  for  the  incriminating  document,  but 
before  the  payment  was  made  and  the  letter  delivered,  the  failure 
of  the  Venizelist  plot  caused  Revinthis  to  flee  Athens.  He  was 
captured  and   the  letter  found   on  him.     Arraigned  in   court,  he 

582 


APPENDICES 

The  barbarous  atrocities  committed  by  tlie  royalists  in 
Athens  and  the  murder  and  pillage  will  result  in  the  vin- 
dication of  our  party.  King  Constantine  lias  climbed  down 
from  the  throne.  He  is  the  leader  of  a  political  part  of 
Greeks  in  opposition  to  mine.  If  (iermany  wins  Constan- 
tine  becomes  an  absolute  monarch;  if  the  Entente  wins  I  fail 
to  see  how  the  king  can  retain  his  crown.  We  have  no 
sympathy  with  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  rights  of  kings. 
Constantine's  army  has  between  30,000  and  40,000  men. 
Its  supplies  have  been  sadly  drained  by  the  ten  months' 
fruitless  mobilization  of  last  year.  Much  of  the  Greek 
war  material  was  surrendered  to  the  Bulgars  and  is  now 
taking  Greek  lives.  .  .  . 

We  desire  the  Entente  to  recognize  the  nationalist 
government  as  the  responsible  government  of  Greece.  This 
government  is  supported  by  tlie  majority  of  the  Greek 
people;  opposed  to  it  is  the  minority  led  by  Constantinc 
and  composed  largely  of  the  military.  We  are  exponents 
of  what  the  Entente  is  fighting  for  —  namely,  liberty  and 
justice.  .  .  . 

The  Entente  has  recognized  our  local  administration  and 
our  ministers  to  the  Entente  were  recognized  yesterday. 

.  .  .  The  islands  have  heard  of  the  provisional  gov- 
ernment, but  as  yet  they  have  seen  little  tangible  evidence 
of  it. 

Recruiting  goes  on  apace  because  the  islanders  have  an 
ingrained  hereditary  hatred  of  the  Bulgars. 

.  .  .  The  blockade  and  reprisal  measures  against  Athens 
as  a  punishment  for  the  recent  atrocities  at  first  worked  a 
hardship  but  that  hardship  has  now  been  removed.  .  .  . 
Unless  we  are  officially  recognized  as  the  sujireme  govern- 
ment in  Greece  we  cannot  legally  call  to  the  colors  Greeks 
residing  in  foreign  territory. 

A  second  big  thing  we  want  of  the  Entente  is  the  Greek 
navy,  which  the  Entente  seized  from  the  royal  marine.     A 

admitted  the  role  he  had  played  in  this  husiness  and  admitted 
also  that  he  liad  not  delivered  the  letter  to  C'lenerfil  Cortik.is. 
General  Corakas,  hefore  the  court,  eoiifiriiicd  this  and  identified 
the  letter  as  in  V'cni/.elos's  handwriting  and  style. 

583 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

nationalist  battleship  sailing  among  the  Greek  islands  and 
into  the  ports  of  old  Greece  would  be  more  effective  in 
stamping  royalist  sentiment  out  of  the  remaining  islands 
than  would  years  of  talk.  We  have  told  the  people  of  the 
islands  that  we  and  the  Entente  are  in  firm  accord,  but  the 
islanders  ask:  "  Where  is  the  Greek  fleet?  " 


584 


APPENDIX  7 

AS  TO  CERTAIN   CLAIMS  MADE  BY   MR. 
VENIZELOS 

I.  That  he  7cas  •f/iiorarit  that  the  AUirs  planned  to  usr 
Greece  as  a  base  of  military  operations  in  Serbia,  and  pro- 
tested thai  violation  of  Greece's  neutraliti/. 

Report  of  speech  in  the  Boulc  of  the  Hellenes  by  Prime 
Minister  E.  K.  \'cnizelos,  session  of  October  i,  1915.  From 
"La  Politique  de  la  Grece,"  by  E.  Venizelos:  Paris,  Im- 
primerie  de  I'Est.      1016.     pp.  36,  37. 

"  I  do  not  wish  to  have  my  words  misinterpreted,  and  I 
must  declare  to  you  that  in  tlie  days  when  the  announcement 
was  made  that  a  P'ranco-Britisli  expeditionary  force  was 
being  sent  to  Saloniki,  the  Greek  Government  protested 
against  this  violation  of  neutrality.  As  I  have  already 
said,  it  could  not  remain  indifferent  in  the  face  of  dangers 
which,  entirely  apart  from  the  violation  of  neutrality,  miglit 
arise  from  the  landing  and  passage  through  Greek  territory 
of  international  contingents,  for  the  idea  was  current  in 
Greece  that  Serbian  territory  would  actually  be  occupied 
and  that  the  passage  through  Greek  territory  would  be 
used  by  the  Allies  to  put  pressure  upon  Serbia  to  obtain 
concessions  for  Bulgaria.  I  was  forced  to  declare  to  llu).-.c 
powers,  toward  whom  Greece  is  sincerely  grateful,  that,  in 
so  far  as  the  passage  through  our  territory  and  the  viola-, 
tion  of  our  neutrality  was  concerned,  I  did  not  feel  obliged, 
in  view  of  the  general  situation  and  the  point  to  which  the 
war  had  progressed,  to  ojjpose  their  pass.ige  by  force  of 
arms;  but  that  I  was  determined  to  confront  the  colossus 
of  the  two  great  powers  with  the  feebh-  forces  of  (irccce  to 
resist  any  debarkation  of  troops  whicii  seemed  likely  to 
endanger  Hellenic  interests." 

585 


CONSTANTINE   I  AND  THE   GREEK  PEOPLE 

Same,  session  of  November  3.  1915;  op.  cit.  p.  150. 

]\Ir.  Venizelos,  addressing  Deputy  G.  Theotokis  of  Cor- 
fou:  "I  certainly  should  not  refer  to  these  matters  if  I 
did  not  feel  that  I  must  protest  most  energetically  against 
your  charges  and  express  my  surprise  that  as  finished  a 
statesman  as  you,  and  one  so  prominent,  could  mount  the 
rostrum  and  accuse  me  of  having  provoked  the  debarkation 
of  the  Anglo-French  army  at  Saloniki !  " 

Report  of  the  Secret  Session  of  the  French  Chamber  of 
Deputies  held  on  June  20,  1916.  From  "  Le  Temps," 
Paris,  October  3,  1919: 

M.  Delcasse  reviewed  the  march  of  events  in  the  Balkans 
in  1915.  The  elections  which  Mr.  Gonnaris  conducted  in 
Greece  had  resulted  in  favor  of  Mr.  Venizelos,  who  was 
returned  to  power.  The  danger  threatening  Serbia  could 
be  met  only  were  Greece  to  go  to  the  assistance  of  Serbia. 
There  was  a  defensive  treaty  between  the  two  peoples. 
^1y.  Venizelos  said  to  us: 

"  Tliis  treaty  provides  that  in  case  Bulgaria  attacks 
Serbia,  in  order  to  secure  the  cooperation  of  Greece,  Serbia 
must  furnish  a  force  of  150,000  men  at  once.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  forced  to  divide  her  forces  to  confront  Germany, 
Austria-Hungary,  and  Bulgaria,  it  will  he  impossible  for 
Serbia  to  furnish  these  150,000  men."  And  turning  to  the 
French  and  British  ministers  in  Athens  he  said  to  them,  on 
September  22,  1915,  "  Can  you  furnish  me  these  150,000?  " 

"  To  be  frank,"  M.  Delcasse  declared,  "  the  prospect  of 
sending  French  soldiers  out  of  the  country  when  the  enemy 
was  on  French  soil  worried  me;  I  had  never  cared  to  con- 
sider such  a  prospect,  for  it  was  plain  to  me  that  Germany 
would  direct  her  greatest  efFort  against  France,  first  of  all, 
to  try  to  crush  us.  Supported  by  Russia,  by  England,  by 
Italy,  by  Spain,  freed  by  virtue  of  her  alliances  and  her 
understandings  from  the  necessity  of  sparing  a  single  one 
of  her  soldiers,  what  France  had  to  do  was  to  concentrate 
all  her  forces  on  the  frontiers  against  which  the  German 
attack  was  directed." 

But  Mr,  Venizelos  had  asked  a  question,  and  had  to  be 
given  an  answer.  "  A  favorable  ansAver  would  permit  him 
to  sound  the  King  of  Greece."     On  September  23,  with  the 

586 


APPENDICES 

approval  of  the  Government,  M.  Delcasse  telegraphed  our 
Minister  at  Athens: 

"  You  may  say  to  Mr.  Venizelos  that  the  Government  of 
the  Republic,  anxious  to  make  it  possible  for  Greece  to  ful- 
fill the  obligations  of  her  treaty  with  Serbia,  is  ready,  for 
its  part,  to  furnish  the  troops  which  have  been  requested." 

This  telegram  was  immediately  communicated  to  Sir 
Edward  Grey,  who  replied  the  same  evening: 

"  This  telegram  so  completely  expresses  my  thouglit  that 
I  have  telegraphed  to  our  Minister  in  Athens  to  read  it  to 
Mr.  Venizelos  in  the  name  of  His  Majesty's  Government." 

M.  Arthur  Groussier  interrupted  M.  Delcasse. 

"  But  you  have  just  said  that  you  did  not  think  that  any 
troops  could  be  sent  to  Greece,  and  yet  in  the  name  of 
France  you  told  Venizelos  the  opposite !     Shame." 

And  M.  Renaudel: 

"  And  3'ou  spoke  in  the  name  of  France !  That 's  the 
kind  of  diplomacy  we  had !  Luckily  we  are  in  secret  ses- 
sion !  " 

And  M.  Lauche: 

"  Setting  a  trap,  in  the  name  of  France !  " 

M.  Delcasse  continued:  "On  September  24,  therefore, 
Mr.  Venizelos  was  assured  of  the  cooperation  of  France 
and  England.  That  same  day  we  learned  of  the  Bulgarian 
mobilization.  ...  If  troops  were  sent  out  there,  they  would 
arrive  too  late  to  save  Serbia.  The  junction  of  the  Aus- 
trians  and  the  Germans  with  the  Turks,  through  Bulgaria, 
was  effected,  and  when  the  expeditionary  force  arrived  in 
Saloniki,  Serbia  was  half  crushed  and  our  expeditionary 
force  was  almost  immediately  compelled  to  take  the  defen- 
sive." 

M.  Delcasse  added:  "  I  heard  somebody  say:  '  But  if 
we  had  not  been  in  Saloniki,  the  Germans  would  be  there 
now.' 

"  The  time  has  come  for  straight  talking,  and  I  am  here 
to  speak  out  my  mind.  I  wish  to  God  the  Germans  were 
there,  and  not  just  with  250,000  or  260,000  men,  as  we  have, 

587 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

but  with  400,000,  with  500,000  men.  .   .  .  There  would  be 
at  least  that  many  Germans  less  on  the  French  front ! 

"  Now  you  have  the  result  of  the  Saloniki  expedition;  it 
did  not  prevent  the  junction  of  the  Germans  with  the  Turks, 
through  Bulgaria ;  it  did  not  save  Serbia ;  it  did  not  prevent 
Rumania,  j^reviously  much  more  circumspect,  from  making 
commercial  treaties,  first  with  Germany  and  then  with  Aus- 
tria; it  did  not  prevent  the  government  of  the  King  of 
Greece  from  adopting  toward  us,  and  little  by  little  accen- 
tuating, the  hostile  attitude  with  which  you  are  familiar. 
But  it  did  make  easier  for  Germany  the  furious  attack 
which  she  has  been  hurling  at  Verdun  for  the  last  four 
months." 

II.  That  in  return  for  Greece's  participation  in  the  war 
on  the  side  of  the  Entente,  Greece  was  promised  territorial 
concessions  so  extensive  as  to  make  possible  "  the  forma- 
tion of  a  great  and  powerful  Greece,  no  longer  forced 
tvrongfuUy  to  draxo  in  her  frontiers,  hut  restored  to  the 
frontiers  within  which  in  prehistoric  times  Greece  exercised 
her  sovereignty." 

Report  of  speech  by  Venizelos  in  the  Boule  of  the  Hel- 
lenes at  the  session  of  October  4,  1915,  op.  cit.  pp.  13,  14. 

"  In  resigning  as  prime  minister  last  February.  I  left  the 
Government  which  succeeded  me  in  the  presence  of  the  fol- 
lowing situation:  the  powers  of  the  Triple  Entente  promised 
Greece  very  vast  territorial  concessions  in  Asia  Minor,  but 
asked  no  territorial  sacrifices  in  return."  ^ 

Report  of  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Commons  from  "  The 
Times  "  of  March  25,  1920;  No.  42,368: 

Mr.  Bonar  Law,  replying  to  Lieut.  Commander  Kent- 
worthy,  said:  ".  .  .  Apart  from  any  natural  obligations 
she  may  have  as  an  ally  during  a  continuance  of  a  state  of 
war,  Great  Britain  is  bound  by  no  secret  agreement  with 
Greece.   .  .   ." 

Lieut.  Commander  Kentworthy  pressed  for  a  reply  to  his 
inquiry  whether  promises  of  military  and  financial  support 

I  Cf.  also  Appendix  1. 

588 


APPENDICES 

to  the  Greek  Government  had  been  made  by  His  Majesty's 
Government  in  the  event  of  a  renewed  conflict  between 
Greece  and  Turkey. 

Mr.  Bonar  Law:  "I  liave  already  answered  that  spe- 
cifically. JCe  are  under  no  ohlif/ations  of  any  kind  to 
Greece." 

III.  That  he  launched  his  "  revolution  "  against  the 
Constitutional  Government  of  Greece  on  September  26, 
1916,  in  response  to  overwhelming  popular  demand  that 
Greece  enter  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Entente,  and  that 
it  was  certain  that  the  moment  the  movement  was  begun, 
200,000  Greeks  would  rally  to  his  standard  to  fight  the 
Bulgarians. 

Excerpts  from  "  La  Grece  Venizeliste  (Souvenirs  vecus)" 
by  General  Maurice  Sarrail,  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
Allied  Armies  at  Saloniki,  published  in  "  La  Revue  de 
Paris,"  December  15,  1919. 

"  The  hereditary  enemy,  the  Bulgar,  was  not  at  Noyon, 
but  at  the  very  gates  of  Macedonia.  That  fact  created  a 
strictly  military  situation  which  could  not  be  ignored.  Real 
or  pretended  patriotism  and  made-to-order  martial  spirit 
have  before  now  in  Europe  proved  the  sole  salvation  of  dis- 
credited political  parties.  The  Venizelists  were  not  long 
in  realizing  that  the  situation  was  capable  of  being  ex- 
ploited, notwithstanding  the  repugnance  of  every  Greek  to 
militarism  and  especially  to  war,  .  .   . 

"  It  was  easy  to  see  that  whether  he  had  any  confidence 
in  the  force  of  the  Entente  or  not,  Venizelos  counted 
rather  upon  time  to  bring  a  solution ;  he  was  in  no  hurry  to 
seize  time  by  the  forelock;  he  seemed  dispcsed  to  put  ofi' 
making  any  decision  until  events  made  it  e.isy  for  him,  or 
indicated,  or  rather  dictated,  a  course  for  him  to  fol- 
low.  .   .   . 

"  1  confess  that  I  received  the  news  of  a  revolutionary 
movement  with  the  greatest  skepticism.  Had  not  V^enizelos 
in  May,  after  Rupel,  proclaimed  to  all  the  world  that  he 
was  ready  to  raise  the  standard  of  revolt.''     '  I  shall  go  to 

589 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

Saloniki/  he  declared.  '  I  shall  set  up  a  provisional  gov- 
ernment and  make  an  appeal  to  the  people  to  fly  to  arms 
against  the  Bulgarians;  but  I  shall  take  no  stand  against 
the  king.'  A  few  days  later  he  declared :  *  The  king  will 
remain  in  Athens,  deserted,  with  only  the  police  force  and 
the  troops  of  the  garrison.  I  shall  propose  to  him  to  rally 
to  the  national  cause  and  to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the 
army;  if  the  king  refuses,  his  fall  will  be  proclaimed.'  This 
was  the  plan.     It  was  not  even  tried.  .   .   . 

"  I  shrugged  my  shoulders  when  I  was  told  that  Veni- 
zelos  was  unwilling  to  return  to  Athens  in  the  train  of  the 
Allies.  A  Minister  of  Greece  need  have  no  diffidence  at 
playing  the  part  of  Talleyrand,  especially  if  in  addition  to 
a  Talleyrand's  unscrupulousness  he  have  also  determination. 
In  August  Venizelos  may  have  desired  a  revolution,  but  he 
had  not  the  courage  to  launch  it.  The  Venizelists,  more 
venturesome  than  their  leader,  were  possibly  ready  to  throw 
off  the  royal  yoke,  but  they  feared  to  compromise  them- 
selves. And  yet  Venizelos  and  Venizelists  were  eager  to 
seize  the  power  in  Greece;  but  neither  Venizelos  nor  the 
Venizelists  were  willing  to  take  any  risks  to  accomplish 
their  end.   .   .   . 

"  This  simple  account  of  all  that  happened  during  those 
strange  days  shows  how  many  times  I  might  have  broken 
up,  nipped  in  the  bud,  a  Venizelism  which  at  that  time  [Sep- 
tember, 1916]  was  virtually  inexistent.  Without  me,  with- 
out the  responsibility  I  was  not  afraid  to  take,  what  would 
have  become  of  Venizelist  Greece?  .  .   . 

"  Under  these  circumstances,  what  was  the  maximum 
military  force  that  the  Government  of  the  National  De- 
fense could  throw  into  tlie  balance  on  our  side.?  In  spite 
of  the  legend  which  has  enveloped  Greece  for  centuries,  the 
force  to  be  counted  on  was  inconsiderable.  .  .  .  Neverthe- 
less, Venizelos  did  not  despair,  and  like  a  new  Sisyphus 
sought  daily  to  bring  to  its  goal  the  ever  rolling  stone  of  his 
mobilization.  How  the  recruiting  sergeants  of  the  bygone 
days  of  the  French  monarchy  must  have  trembled  with  de- 
light in  their  graves  to  watch  their  Hellenic  brethren  at 
work!     How  many  villages  had  to  be  surrounded  by  con- 

590 


APPENDICES 

stabulary,  the  way  we  used  to  do  it  in  the  old  days,  before 
the  required  quota  of  recruits  was  forthcoming !  How  mucli 
shooting  liad  to  be  done  in  the  Chalcidic  Peninsula  and 
elsewhere  to  keep  the  men  of  draft  age  from  escaping  by 
sea  or  into  the  forests !  How  many  deserters  or  those 
unwilling  to  serve  had  to  be  rounded  up  from  hiding 
places.   ... 

"  On  September  22,  the  first  battalion  left  for  the  front. 
They  were  not  a  bad-looking  lot,  but  to  have  turned  out 
only  1000  men  when  an  appeal  had  been  made  to  the  wliole 
of  Greece  was  no  cause  for  wild  enthusiasm.  ...  I  had 
received  1000  men  of  whose  value  as  soldiers  I  knew  noth- 
ing, whom  I  had  taken  in  almost  naked  and  whom  I  was 
forced  to  feed.  ...  In  March,  1917,  there  was  still  only 
a  division  of  three  regiments  of  infantry  and  the  nucleus  of 
an  artillery  regiment !   .   .   . 

"  But  at  what  price  had  we  bought  this  military  aid  ? 
Here  are  some  of  the  telegrams  he  [Venizelos]  sent: 

("  In  part  of  Crete,  the  mobilization  was  making  a  poor 
showing.) 

"  '  Send  Deputies  to  warm  up  zeal  of  the  people  —  and 
give  them  each  an  expense  fund  of  500  drachmae.' 

(In  certain  of  the  islands  the  mobilization  was  very  un- 
popular. The  draft  men  kept  clamoring  that  they  would 
join  the  colors  only  when  called  out  by  the  king.) 

"  '  Send  the  Cretan  constabulary.'  ^ 

(In  Chios.) 

"  '  Send  supplies  before  publishing  the  mobilization  de- 
cree.' 

(In  Mytilene  a  town  rebelled.) 

1  The  brutality  of  the  Cretan  constabulary  is  almost  as  famous 
as  tliat  of  the  Cossacks. 

591 


CONSTANTINE  I  AND  THE  GREEK  PEOPLE 

"  '  I  want  a  company  of  soldiers,  and  all  outstanding 
financial  claims  must  be  paid.'  ^ 

In  Crete  Venizelos  insisted  on  having  all  war  allowances 
paid  up  before  he  would  even  go  to  the  island.  In  Samos  a 
representative  of  the  Venizelist  Government,  to  hasten  the 
tardy  levies,  had  the  nerve  to  suggest  that  we  promise  the 
Samians  land  grants  in  Asia  Minor !  A  cabinet  minister 
telegraphed  to  this  same  island: 

"  '  If  it  is  necessary,  a  reign  of  terror  must  be  inaugu- 
rated.' " 

1  As  the  Allied  fleet  had  used  Mytilene  as  a  base  since  1915, 
there  were  accounts  due  the  natives  from  the  Allied  authorities. 
Many  of  these  were  grossly  padded,  but  here  as  in  Crete  and  Sa- 
loniki,  they  all  had  to  be  paid  before  Venizelos  would  try  to  raise 
any  soldiers. 


592 


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